Dea Ex Machina
by mercurybard
Summary: A Higher Power has been sent to make things right post NFA. Unfortunately, she's misplaced half her charges in a hell dimension and sent the others to break into Wolfram & Hart!
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: _Angel_ belongs to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy, not me.

Author's Note: Thanks to –J and Imzadi for reviewing! I love getting your comments and critiques. **Warning**: This chapter is a little more intense than the others with references to torture. Also a kiss that is "rather deep and French" to quote Excel. Don't read if this bothers you.

"**We'll stand on our records. It's the only thing we've got." –Lindsey, "Reprise"**

His memories were nothing but blurs. Big, fat, red blurs that swirled together in a cacophony of pure pain. If he was capable of it, he would have regretted signing away his soul to Wolfram & Hart. There were a thousand other regrets he could have felt at just that second, but that was the main one. But there was just too much pain for regrets…for thinking…

He hung in the iron shackles, knees barely brushing the ground. It was hard to breathe like this, and the metal of the cuffs had long since chaffed his wrists to bleeding. His pulse pounded in his ears, but it felt too slow…everything was just too slow. One bleeding minute dragging out into the next as his life seemed to drip away.

Except it couldn't.

Dead.

He was dead. It took him a moment to remember that. He couldn't die because he was already dead. Dead and in Hell. Something trickled down the side of his nose to his upper lip where it hung, perched, for a second before falling on to his lower lip. Tentatively, he stuck out his tongue to taste it. His mouth was so parched that just trying to breathe through it hurt.

Blood.

And then there were lips on his, crushing against his. Agony as another mouth pressed against his bruised one. Pain…and then warmth. A soothing warmth that seemed to slip down his throat and into his belly even as a tongue was pushed into his mouth. White heat—that's what swept down his torso. He moaned as he felt it knit muscle and bone back together. The lips pushed harder against him, and the heat in his torso flared even hotter. It was healing, but it was pain too, and he found himself screaming into the kiss…

When Lindsey came to, he found himself not hurting for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. He was on the floor, as well, though still chained at wrists and ankles. He lifted one hand experimentally and moved it into his field of vision. His arm ached—everything ached, actually—but it didn't hurt per se. More like he'd gone to the gym the day before and gone through a good work out. The right kind of aches that suggested healing.

He frowned as he noticed something else on his wrist besides the shackle. A large silver cross on what looked like a silver chain necklace was wrapped two or three times around his wrist. The trinket was covered with blood, still tacky, unlike the blood on the shackle itself, which was dried to an earthy brown. "Wha?" he tried to say. His voice came out a raspy croak. The voice of a man not used to talking. The voice of a man whose vocal cords had been damaged by his own screams. The voice of a man in Hell.

"It's hiding you, for the moment," a voice answered. "The blood isn't yours."

He lifted his head and then propped himself up on his elbows, the effort making him groan. A young woman sat in front of him, cross-legged, with her hands on her knees as if she'd been meditating. Black jeans, a white tank top, and studded belt. Black hair pulled up in a top knot. Pretty, petite, and covered in blood. He had a feeling most of it was his. Like she had pressed herself against him. One guess as to who had kissed him. "So you're my new jailor," he said as he levered himself up on to hands and knees. The effort made him dizzy. "What? So they heal you in hell now? Was I getting too broken, and you were afraid I'd just shut down and stop feeling the torture?"

"Anyone ever tell you that you're a dick?" she asked.

"All the time," he muttered. He was trying to rally himself to sit down…or at least move, but the dizziness wasn't fading as fast as it should.

"You're probably going to feel a little weak," she explained. "I had to use some of your own reserves to heal you. You really don't want to know how bad they fucked you up—ruptured organs, broken bones…the list is long and gory, boy."

"It goes with being tortured for an eternity." That's what it was—why he was here. Now that she'd fixed him, thinking was now an option as well as regretting. So he kept with the talking in hopes that it would hold the regret at bay. "So, if you're not my jailer, then who the hell are you and why are you here?"

"My name's Cass, I'm the Oracle, and I'm here to make you a deal."

He gave her a twisted little smile. "I don't do deals."

"Funny, because I was under the impression that it was a deal that got you stuck down here after you got shot. Something about your contract with Wolfram & Hart extending into perpetuity." She stood up, giving him a good look at her combat boots, and crossed the room to squat down in front of him. Taking his chin in her hand, she tilted his face up to look him in the eye. "You're in a bad, bad place, Lindsey McDonald. If I were you, I might stop mouthing off and start listening."

He gave her a withering glare and then jerked his chin out of her grasp. "I'll listen."

"Good."


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: _Angel_ belongs to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy, not me. Also, _Prison Break_ (yes, _Prison Break_) does not belong to me either.

Author's Note: Thanks to Imzadi for the review. Yes, we've finally gotten around to your Dear Boy. We're going to have to leave Lorne and Anya for later as I've got Lindsey's Great Escape from Hell in my head. Things are about to get very weird from here on out.

"**I wasn't capable of it and neither are you." –Angel to Lindsey in "The Trial"**

"He's taking us all down to hell!"

Lindsey watched as the guards led the screaming man away. The prisoner wasn't a big man—much smaller than the two guards…no, "bulls" (inmates called the guards "bulls"—he had to remember that) who were hustling him away—but they were having a hard time restraining the wiry fellow. It didn't take a genius to realize the man was absolutely crazy—his face swollen and red from pepper spray. "Loco," Lindsey muttered under his breath. The Spanish word fit the heavy accent that coated it. Somehow, it didn't make him feel any more comfortable about the situation.

"_I can get you out of here," Cass said as she moved to unlock his shackles, "But you're going to have to run the Gauntlet."_

_The chains fell away, leaving just the silver cross dangling from his wrist. "Never heard of it." He rubbed at the newly healed skin on his hand—by tomorrow, all evidence of chafing would be gone. A sight better than any healing job he'd ever gotten while working at Wolfram & Hart. Even the faint line from the transplant was gone. He ran a finger along where the flesh seam used to be. Its absence was troubling, and he wasn't sure why._

"_You paying attention?"_

_Lindsey blinked and looked over at the so-called Oracle. "Yeah…yeah, I'm listening."_

_She settled herself cross-legged in front of him again, resting her hands on her knees. It was a position of meditation, but her expression was grim. "The Gauntlet's a compromise between the Powers and Wolfram & Hart—one last chance to get people out of Hell, but first it's going to take its pound of flesh and pint of blood out of you before it'll let you go." She held up three fingers. "You'll get tossed into three situations, and they're not going to be pleasant ones. Three chances to prove that you're on the side of the angels—that's the Gauntlet."_

_Lindsey bit back a laugh. A reprieve—who'd have thought you could get one of those down here? His contract with Wolfram & Hart was ironclad—he'd read it over himself. Yet, apparently, there was this preexisting agreement between Good and Evil that had opened up a loophole. It was too perfect. "Where do I sign up?"_

"Get in there, Sucre!" One bull had remained behind—a short, stocky fellow that had "thug" written all over him. Lindsey took one look at him and knew this guard was the kind that enjoyed bulling the inmates—and it was he who had bellowed.

It took Lindsey a moment to realize that the guard was talking to him. Fernando Sucre. That was name of the body he'd been dumped into. Prison number 10960, serving a seventeen year sentence for two accounts of aggravated robbery. That was all Cass had been able to tell him before sending him into the Gauntlet. That and a little bit about Sucre's cellmate.

He stepped into the cell, holding his tub of personal belongings, pillow resting on top, in front of him. The cellmate the Oracle had given him a bit of information on was sitting on the cell's bottom bunk, a paperback book in his hands. When he stood, he made Lindsey suddenly feel short. This Sucre wasn't very tall—maybe five-eight—and the other man had about four inches on him. Deep-set, light-colored eyes and dark hair buzzed down close to his head.

"_The Gauntlet drops you into someone—straight into their body. You look like them, sound like them. Hell, after a while, you might even start to think like them. I don't know. Never had to help someone through this before. Basically, the Powers search the whole human race for someone who's in a situation that can be used to test you and yank their spirit out before plunking you in."_

"_What happens to the other guy?"_

"_He gets to sit in the Receiving Office and twiddle his thumbs until you either pass the test or fail it." _

"_Got any clues for me as to what the test is going to be like?"_

_She shook her head, making her dark ponytail bounce. "All I know is that it's called the 'Trial of the Wolf'." Reaching into the back pocket of her jeans, she took out a piece of paper and unfolded it. It was a list, printed out on one of those old printers that still fed the paper through using a line of holes on each side. "The guy who you'll be swapping with is named Fernando—he's in prison in Illinois." _

_Lindsey's carefully neutral expression must have slipped just a little at that._

_Of course, she noticed. "Got a problem with that?"_

_He glared. She returned the look, matching it measure for measure. "I'm a lawyer."_

"_Who used to work for an evil law firm—yeah, I know. That's why you're down here, remember?" She stood, brushing her hands off on the back of her legs. "Fernando's cellmate's name is Michael Scofield. Try not to be a complete bastard."_

Michael Scofield looked down at Lindsey, eyes boring into him. The man didn't even seem to notice the blood running down from a deep gash right above his left eyebrow. Like a fork of red lightning, it spread slowly down the side of his face before disappearing underneath his chin. In a few minutes, it would dribble down his neck and begin to stain his gray undershirt.

Lindsey opened his mouth to greet Michael, but the guard pushed past him into the cell. "I told you not to go around my back to the Pope. But you just had to keep making waves, didn't you?" the bull growled, getting right up in Michael's face even as Lindsey's cellmate turned away. The guard got no answer. Lindsey stood there, holding his tub in front of him, wondering if the question made any more sense to Michael than it did to him. He stepped to the side (not a small feat given the narrowness of the cell) to let the guard—who wore the look of a cat who'd just swallowed a nice, fat canary—by. A moment later, the door slammed shut with a heavy metallic clang.

"Hey," Lindsey said tentatively once the guard was gone.

A half-smile twisted Michael's mouth as he stepped forward, holding out his fist and tried to do one of those fist-bumping, cool guy things that passed for a handshake on the streets. Lindsey had no idea what the move were, and his cellmate didn't seem much better at it. It ended with a brief and very manly embrace that caught the former lawyer completely off-guard.

"It's good to have you back," Michael told him as they stepped away. "Ready to dig?"

"Yeah…sure," Lindsey said. Digging? What, was Michael Scofield trying to dig his way out of an Illinois penitentiary? Damn Cass for dumping him in here with no more than a name. The next time he saw the Oracle, they were going to have a _very_ long chat.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't _Angel_ or _Prison Break_. The Oracle a.k.a. Cass is mine, but if you want to borrow her for whatever reason, just drop me a line and then have fun.

Author's Note: Yes, I know, this fic just got very, very bizarre. There is a logical reason for that. Basically, I've been obsessed with _Prison Break_ and bored with _Angel_. However, I haven't been able to come up with good ideas for a _Prison Break_ fic, and I've been meaning to work more on 'Dea Ex Machina' for a while now. So, I'm trying to put together the best of both worlds.

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"**I'll dig like a psychotic rodent if I have to" –Sucre from _Cute Poison_**

#&#&#&#&#&#&#&#

The Oracle hit the ground running. Her combat boots made loud bangs against the tile floor as she tore down the long white hall. To the human eye, the hall seemed to stretch on forever, lined with gray metal doors like soldiers standing guard along both sides. This was the Home Office. Well, technically, both Good and Evil had to use the mortal plane as their home offices, but sometimes Good employed people it didn't want working out of an office off of Wall Street. Those people ended up getting the work correspondence addressed to this dimension.

There was a trick to traveling down the Hall—it would fold in on itself to bring you to your destination if you had a clear enough mental image of where it was you wanted to go. She was only running because she hated transporting across hell dimensions to get here—always made her soles feel like they were on fire.

Besides, she was pretty sure she didn't have a lot of time.

As she ran, arms pumping at her sides, she pictured the door to her office with its sign '2337' and the picture of Johnny Depp taped below it. The hall collapsed inwards in front of her eyes…and, then, a moment later, her door appeared right in front of her. Didn't give her enough time to stop and she smacked into it still going full-tilt.

"Ow!" she yelped, hands flying to the spot on her skull where forehead had met door.

The door opened, making her jump back in surprise. A green head with two red horns poked itself out into the hall and flashed her a dazzling smile. "Hey, sugar cakes, where _have_ you been?"

"Lorne…how'd you get into my office?" Cass asked, confused. "I thought I sent you to the Receiving Office to find Anya Emerson."

"Oh, you did, doll, and I did—find her, that is," he assured her. "In fact, that little minx is currently curled up on your bargain basement sofa snoozing away. And, I might add," he whispered conspiratorially. She leaned in to hear him better. "She's snoring like a freight train."

That got a giggle out of her.

He looked her up and down, his bright red eyes taking in each blood stain and escaped curl. "You, darling, look like you've been through the wringer—and by wringer, I mean an industrial-sized wringer that takes ten-foot trolls to operate."

She brushed a hand uselessly at the stains. "It's not mine; it's Lindsey's." Now that she actually stopped and looked at herself, Lorne was right—she was a mess. She'd forgotten how much blood a human body contained. Though, usually, when a human was missing this much of the red stuff it meant they were a butchered corpse.

"It looks like you rolled in it…wait, never mind, I don't want to know. How is our eternally prodigal lawyer doing anyway?"

"Well, he's out of Hell, for now."

Lorne's smile widened. It was like a gigantic weight had suddenly been lifted from the anagogic demon's shoulders and transferred into the ether. Not even his giddy, post-swing dancing mood at the Bellagio had been this light-hearted. "That's great!" He scooped her up into his arms and crushed her to his chest.

Her back popped. From here, she could look over Lorne's shoulder at the half-opened door with its glossy and crinkled picture of Mr. Depp at a piano, cigarette smoke curling up around him. "Lorne," she said quietly, "Put me down."

He did as she asked, dropping her rather suddenly. The sound of her boots striking the tile on landing echoed up and down the hall. The Oracle glanced down in either direction—no one. No office doors open; nobody lingering in the hall to smoke or just get out of the enclosed space of their work area. "What's wrong?" Lorne asked.

She looked down at her feet. "I got him out Hell, but there's a pretty good chance he's going to be going straight back." She didn't want to say it—didn't want to tell him that there was only a small chance…miniscule really, that the man he killed was going to get that second chance. Actually, having met Lindsey, this was probably going to be his second hundredth chance. But it was the absolutely _last _one. If he couldn't handle the Gauntlet, that was it. No redemption. Not if he fucked this up.

"Why?"

"Have you ever heard of the Gauntlet?" She raised her eyes to him, forcing herself to show nothing but seriousness and sympathy.

He shook his head.

"Wolfram & Hart, law firm, is only the latest face Evil's used in the big moral battle for mankind. It's also the most effective. Lawyers aren't inherently scary…"

"I beg to differ, angel wings," he interrupted, managing a weak smile. Her little news had dumped that weight square down on his shoulders again. Killed her to look at him.

"Lawyers are human-looking," she explained. "Not little odd-skinned demons with horns and burning eyes—no offense…"

"None taken."

"Odd-colored demons just popping into peoples' lives and offering to buy souls. Lawyers are…well, sneaky, and it's won Wolfram & Hart more than their fair share of souls. Well, a couple years ago, after Vocah killed the oracles in L.A., the Powers That Be demanded some sort of retribution. Since your friend, Angel, had already taken care of Vocah, the Powers could pretty much ask for anything. They asked for the right to set up the Gauntlet. If a soul in Hell can pass three tests, it can be turned over to the Powers to do what they will with it. Problem is, both Good and Evil can manipulate the terms of the tests and usually do. The whole thing turns into a big, fucking mess—especially when they decided to hold the tests here on the mortal plane, which is where Lindsey's seem to be taking place."

"Where is he now?"

"In the body of a man named Fernando currently imprisoned in the Fox River Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois."

Lorne laughed. "The lawyer in jail—bless my Great-Aunt Grat's speckled hams, somebody's got a sense of humor."

Cass smiled too. "Or justice. Either way, I get to try and help steer him through the test. And, trust me, he's going to need all the help he can get."

"Then what are we waiting for?"

"You to move your cute little green behind so I can get to my computer."

#&#&#&#&#&#&#&#&#

Lorne watched over the Oracle's shoulder as she called up files on her computer. The machine, on the outside, looked like an ancient Apple II, but it seemed to be running off a version of Windows the former Host hadn't seen before. It was also loading pages with lightning speed. A picture of an Hispanic man with a shaved head and a strong chin appeared.

"This is the man Lindsey's spirit currently inhabits. From reading over his prison file—which is _so_ much more detailed and useful than the files we've got here in the office, let me tell you—I can't figure out what's so special about him. However…" She tapped a few more keys, bringing up a picture of a young man with a tiny widow's peak and blue-green eyes. Unlike humans, Lorne never really noticed eyes—general shape of the face was more his thing. However, this boy's gaze was so intense that he couldn't help but look at those sea baby blues. "This is Lindsey's cellmate. Name's Michael Scofield, a structural engineer who tried to rob a bank and got himself a five-year sentence instead."

On the couch (which he was still convinced she'd bought at Salvation Army—it was lumpy, smelled of mothballs and Lysol, and _plaid_. He'd never seen such a hideous piece of furniture before in his life), Anya snorted and rolled over in her sleep. Now, _there_ was a character if Lorne had ever met one, bless his horns. He'd tracked her down to the Receiving Office, just like Cass had told him.

"_Good morning," he greeted the demon behind the desk. A carthogret, if he wasn't mistaken—it was sure hard to mistaken the blueberry blue skin and ten tiny silver horns! "I'm looking for a woman named Anya Emerson. Any chance you could tell me where I could find her?"_

_The desk demon looked up at him and snorted. "Finally. I've been trying to get someone to come get her out of my fucking waiting room for over a year now."_

_Lorne blinked, a little taken aback at the carthogret's rudeness, but he recovered quickly, smoothing his cravat. "If you could just point her out for me, I'll have her out of here in two shakes…"_

_The demon pointed behind him, and he turned, following the direction the clawed finger indicated. A pretty, young thing sat in a chair near the back of the room, chewing on her lower lip as she looked around. She wore a lemon yellow sundress decorated with embroidered gold daffodils. Her dishwater blond hair was cropped off at the shoulder and loosely curled. One finger tapped irritably against her knee, the only sign of impatience she was displaying. _

_He sat down in the hard plastic chair beside her, unbuttoning the bottom button on his blazer first. "So you're Anya," he said. "I'm Lorne." He held out a hand for her to shake._

_She regarded it with a look that might have been curiosity. "You are green and demon-shaped, but you are still wearing an expensive suit. I'm guessing you are a demon who understands the nature of money. I have several large wads of it in my purse and will give half of it to you if you get me out of here." She looked down at the handbag leaning against the leg of her chair. It was black velvet with a glittery silver butterfly appliqué on the side and big enough to hold a bowling ball. _

"_I…" Lorne started. _

_She bent over and picked the purse up, separating the handles to give him a very clear view of the stacks of one hundred dollar bills sitting in the bottom of her purse._

"_All right, I will give you all but one stack. I need to keep some for myself in case an emergency comes up."_

_He swallowed. "Sparkle bunny…" he started to say before she cut him off with an ear-piercing shriek. _

"_Bunny? Where?" Anya jumped up on the chair like the stereotypical Victorian lady after seeing a mouse, her brown eyes darting nervously around in their sockets. He was finding this even more puzzling than the bag of money._

_Lorne stuck a finger in his ear and rubbed. The woman was definitely a soprano, no doubt about that. "What has you all in such a tizzy, sugar cakes?"_

"_Bunnies…I hate them. They have these beady little black eyes that just stare at you. And they don't talk. Have you ever heard a rabbit talk? No, because they don't—they just let out these horrible screams like nails on a chalk board when they're going to die. Nasty, nasty little rodents."_

"_Now, I'll be the first one to admit that I'm no Jane Goodall, but I don't think rabbits are considered rodents." He stood, offering her his hand again, this time to help her down off the chair. "I think you've been sitting in this waiting room just a tad too long, goldilocks—you're acting just a little odd. Why don't we go find ourselves a nice espresso and treat ourselves? On second thought, scratch the espresso—I don't think you need any more caffeine."_

Lorne leaned in closer. "You think he's the reason the PTB chose to plop Lindsey in Fox River?"

"I don't know what else it could be."

"Honey child, I don't want to say this but how are we supposed to help him if we don't even know what he's supposed to be doing."

That made the Oracle look up, a smug little smile creeping across her face. "What's this 'we'? I thought you didn't want anything to do with the Powers."

"I helped you out with Anya, didn't I? Maybe it's nice to be doing something good again." That wasn't all of it, but he wasn't ready to admit that—not here. He needed a little more time to think. Or, maybe, time to stop thinking, since that'd been all he'd been doing since he hightailed it out of the City of Angels—thinking and drinking, about how things had gotten so horribly, horribly twisted. Looking back now, Lorne realized that he hadn't once smiled between L.A. and Las Vegas. These ruby red lips of his had been permanently stuck in 'frown'. Then, in blew this little bit of a Higher Power, with all her sweet promises of maybe making everything right again. How could he pass the chance up? Especially when she asked so nicely?


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I don't own _Buffy, Angel, _or _Prison Break_. The Oracle (a.k.a Cass) is all mine, but anyone who wants to borrow her is welcome to so long as they drop me a line and tell me first.

Author's Note: Imzadi, I know these last couple of chapters haven't been quite your taste, but thanks for taking the time to review anyway. And, no, rabbits aren't rodents—Anya's just being silly.

Timeline: _Buffy / Angel_—post-"Not Fade Away" (runs parallel to my other fic, "Trinity"). _Prison Break_—drops in mid-"Cute Poison" and goes wildly AU after that.

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"**You two have the most dysfunctional idea of love I've ever seen" –Veronica, from _Prison Break_**

#&#&#&#&#&#&#&#

The Oracle had spent time in another person's skin before. Other jobs, when she was an enforcer, not a caseworker, had sent her to the mortal plane, usually to bust heads. She understood the rules well enough—the body she borrowed had to be female and, while she occupied it, she was fairly limited in her powers. No shapeshifting; no teleportation except back to her own body, which was currently stretched out on the couch in her office. Lorne had woken Anya, so she'd have some place to stretch out.

No matter how many times she did it, she still couldn't get used to the feel of wearing someone else's flesh.

Cass lifted her head and looked at herself in the mirror-fronted medicine cabinet. Green eyes stared back at her. A high brow, light reddish-brown hair pulled partially back to keep it out of the way, full lips with just a smudge of fading lip gloss on them, a stubborn chin—it was a face she might have chosen for herself if she were shapeshifting. It was the face of Dr. Sara Tancredi, prison doctor. This was practically the only female with access to the prison population on a day-to-day basis—pretty much making her the Oracle's only choice if she wanted to be able to communicate with Lindsey.

He'd been in place for several hours now, as she and Lorne rushed around the office trying to figure out what the hell kind of scenario the Powers and Wolfram & Hart were playing, sending him here to Fox River. So far, they had absolutely zilch.

"Hey, Doc, you ready for Scofield?"

Cass straightened so quickly that she nearly banged her head on the edge of cabinet. "Uh…uh…" She looked frantically around the small infirmary room. "I need to get his file."

The nurse gave her a knowing look as she ducked into the infirmary waiting room. "Doc, you have got to take some time off—you keep burning the candle at both ends like this and you're just gonna burn out." She held a file out to Cass.

Opening the manila-colored file folder, the Oracle looked at the name listed on the very top: Michael Scofield. Some Power must like her today. The only person she would rather talk to was Lindsey…ahem, Fernando, but she'd take what she could get. "What's he coming in for today?" she asked the nurse casually.

The nurse gave her an 'are you crazy?' look. "Same thing he comes in for every day—his insulin shot."

"Uh, right." Cass gave herself a good mental kicking as she flipped through the various pages in Scofield's file. Type-1 diabetes and two missing toes. The diabetes he'd come with; the toes were a more recent happening. Silently, she started cursing whatever god she'd been thanking a moment before—she had no idea how to administer insulin. Suddenly, posing as the prison's doctor didn't seem like the brightest idea ever.

"You ok, Doc?" the nurse asked, worry managing to knit her finely-plucked eyebrows together. "If you're not feeling good, I can take care of Scofield." She had picked up a metal tray covered in a blue cloth. On top rested a hypodermic needle and a small bottle of what Cass supposed was insulin. Instead of offering it to her, the nurse was keeping it close to her bosom.

"No, no, I'm fine." The Oracle held out her hand expectantly, and the nurse put the tray into it with a little shake of her head.

The other woman didn't look like she was buying it, but Cass headed into the exam room anyway. They'd let Scofield in while she was outside, and he sat in a plastic chair in the corner. At the sight of her, he began rolling up one sleeve of the white thermal undershirt he wore under his prison blues. She kept her expression carefully neutral as she set the tray down on a table. He looked exactly like the picture in his prison file, though she hadn't expected him to have both arms covered in tattoos extending from the wrists up into his shirt sleeves. She glanced down at the file, which she's left conveniently open on her knee when she settled on one of those little rolling stools common to all modern doctors' offices. According to the notes, the tattoos covered not only both arms but his entire chest and back as well.

"What's an engineer doing with fifty percent of his body tattooed?" she asked as she flipped back through Dr. Tancredi's notes, trying to find something that would help her with the insulin. For a moment, she debated popping Sara in and letting her handle this, but then she dismissed the idea—Scofield might notice the transfer and start asking questions.

Michael didn't answer her. The Oracle looked up at him. The look on his face was cocky, almost flirtatious. So the prisoner had a thing for the doctor. Didn't surprise Cass—she had to be the only pretty female any of these men saw on a regular basis. Half the prison population probably had a crush on Dr. Tancredi. At this point, the Oracle could care less. However, her second look at the man gave her an excuse to stall. Michael Scofield had a Band-Aid half-plastered open a nasty-looking gash on his forehead.

"Ok, what happened here?" she asked, reaching up to peel off the bandage. She tried to be gentle, but it still seemed like the adhesive took some of his eyebrow hairs along with it.

"Caught an elbow playing basketball," he answered.

Cass snorted. "Who'd the elbow belong to? The Jolly Green Giant? First your toes, now this—you know you're going to get killed in here if you don't start being careful."

"I'll be fine," he assured her, the cocky grin not going anywhere. "I'll even take you to dinner when I get out of here alive."

"Michael…" she started to say as she dropped the Band-Aid in the bio-waste bin and took a small gauze pad and some surgical tape out of the cabinet above it.

"Ok, lunch," he countered.

She sat back down on the stool and took his chin in her hands, turning it so she could get a good look at the wound. Diabetes, she knew nothing about, but bloody wounds were right up her alley. Too bad she couldn't pull a bit of healing like she had on Lindsey, but not only would that betray her cover but she didn't have access to that power while in this body. If he had caught an elbow on the basketball court, it must have sent him face-first into the fence. There was a nice vertical split right through his left eyebrow. "You're going to scar," she informed him curtly, letting go of his chin.

"All right, coffee. When I get out of here alive, say you'll meet me for coffee."

"I'm guessing it's your smooth-talking that gets you into so much trouble in the yard," she replied as she dabbed at the excess blood. A scab was already starting to form, so she doubted it would need stitches unless it opened up again. She stuck the bit of gauze over it. It went on a little croaked, but who was going to notice?

Scofield looked down at his shoes. Cass hoped she hadn't accidentally just killed a budding relationship between him and the lady-doctor. But, she didn't have time to dwell on it—time to transport out unless she wanted to mess with the insulin and, even after looking the chart over, she had no confidence in her ability to not mess it up. Best leave it to the professionals. The jailhouse infirmary wavered in front of her eyes for a moment, and then she was gone.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: I don't own _Angel_, _Buffy: The Vampire Slayer_, or _Prison Break._ Don't bother suing—we're broke.

Author's Note: Thanks to Imzadi (I don't know why you put up with me), -J, David Morris, and Rob for the reviews.

Timeline: _Buffy_ / _Angel_—post-NFA (runs parallel to my other fic "Trinity"). _Prison Break_—drops in mid-"Cute Poison" and goes wildly AU after that.

#&#&#&#&#&#&#&#&#

**Lindsey: "Damn, girl, you gave up immortality for me. It's like something out of a fairy tale."  
Eve: "We don't live in a fairy tale." –"Not Fade Away"**

#&#&#&#&#&#&#&#&#

"The number you have dialed as been disconnected. Please…"

Lindsey slammed the phone's receiver down before the electronic voice could finish its spiel and then picked it up again. He'd found a phone card amongst Fernando Sucre's things back in the cell and brought it out to the yard with him after the C.O.s (correctional officers…yet another shorthand term for "guards" that he had to remember) had led his still-bleeding roommate off to the infirmary. He'd gotten a chance to look at himself in the mirror to—to see the face he was now wearing. It was a face that matched the accent—Hispanic. Head shaved smooth but with heavy black eyebrows and a little triangular wedge of a beard right below his lower lip. This Sucre wasn't someone he'd have represented at Wolfram & Hart…Evil Lawyers, Inc. didn't usually didn't deal with ordinary criminals. Something about this new body of his reminded him of Angel's pal, that street kid named Gunn. Though, the last time Lindsey'd seen him, the kid had been wearing a suit and talking in legalese. Wolfram & Hart got to everyone eventually. Some small part of his brain wondered what kind of contracted they'd gotten Gunn into even as his fingers dialed the twenty or so numbers needed to connect using the phone card.

This was the fourth and final number he had. All the others had been disconnected. If she didn't pick up on this one, then he'd have to assume she was gone. "Gone" probably meant dead, and "dead" probably meant in Hell. He shut down that train of thought before it progressed much farther. His fingers twisted around the cord of phone.

Three rings…four. So far no annoying message telling him that the line was no longer working. His gut clenched. Surely the phone company wouldn't have reassigned the number, not this early, but he didn't know much about how they operated. Mucking with the utilities wasn't his style. If he was going to mess with an enemy, he preferred it to be one-on-one where he could look them in the eye. In that way, he sort of understood Angel's fascination with swords. There were very few weapons more personal than a blade. Some might have construed this to mean he had some kind of honor code that he adhered. Some days, he might even agree with them. Today might even be one of those days.

The phone picked up on the other end, turning his attention back to the matters at hand. "Hello?" The voice was feminine and reminded him of full smirking lips, soft brown hair, well-manicured hands placed on slender hips, and the clack of high heels on a hard wood floor.

"Eve."

There was the sound of plastic against cloth as she shifted the phone into a better position. "Who is this?"

"It's…" He started to say "It's me, Lindsey", but suddenly he was very aware of the man waiting impatiently behind him for the phone, of the other prisoners milling around the yard, of the bulls walking the perimeter with their weapons. Here, he wasn't Lindsey McDonald, he was Fernando Sucre. That was the deal he'd made with the Powers and with the Oracle. "It's the man you gave up your immortality for," he said, settling for that.

There was a hiss. It reminded him a little of a spitting house cat, but he knew it was just the noise she made when something genuinely surprised her. It was cute, how cat-like she could be. With some women, such habits would be coy—a trick to lure men in—but Eve did it without thinking. She was the creation of Wolfram & Hart, their rebellious daughter. She'd inherited some of their predatory nature, though they'd bundled it up in a deceptively tiny, feisty package. "Lindsey? Lindsey, where the hell are you?"

"Yeah, it's me," he said, leaning into the phone, cradling it in both hands against his neck and ear. "I'm in Joliet, Illinois. The Fox River Penitentiary."

She laughed. It was a short bark of a sound. He remembered that laugh all too well—Eve only used it when she was talking about work, about Wolfram & Hart. She had never used that laugh or the voice that when with it when she was talking about him…_them_. "You rush off to fight the good fight or whatever it was you did with Angel, then you disappear for weeks and my sources tell me you're dead, and now you turn up half way across the country working on the Lincoln Burrows case. Am I going to get an explanation?"

The harshness of her tone shocked him so much he almost dropped the phone. In fumbling it, he succeeded in hitting his head on the side of the small booth that surrounded the phone, giving the user a bit of privacy and a tiny shelf on which to put a scrap of paper. The man behind him in line snickered. All the little hairs on the back of Lindsey's neck stood up. He'd been so wrapped up in Eve's voice that he'd forgotten where he was. Dangerous…and stupid. "Lincoln Burrows?"

"Don't try to play me, Lindsey. Remember way back when Lorne did his little reading on me and told me my future would be shit?"

Her voice was openly hostile now. He swallowed. "Yeah…"

"Guess what—it was." Then she slammed the phone down with such finality that it made his ear ring.

He lowered the receiver, looking at it in disbelief. The silver cross on its chain around his wrist clinked against the little shelf as the dial tone whined faintly at him. "Eve…"

"Hey, would you hurry it up already? My Aunt Ruth's waiting for me to call," the man behind him snarled.

Lindsey's body was moving before his mind even had a chance to process what was going on. All he could think about was the sound of her hanging up. His fist, on the other hand, came flying out around—the cord holding the receiver to the rest of the phone snapping—and connected with the other man's face with a meaty smack. Then, all hell broke loose.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I don't own _Buffy: The Vampire Slayer_, _Angel_, or _Prison Break_. I do, however, own The Oracle (a.k.a. Cass)

Author's Note: Hugs to Imzadi and –J for their reviews. Also, it was pointed out to me that Anya's name is "Jenkins", not "Emerson". As of right now, I'm not going to go back and change all the wrong references, but I will get it right from now on. I swear. Again, this is not the chapter 9 I intended to write, but the one I had started…well, I'm having medical problems and it's affecting my memory and I forgot what the scene I'd started was about. laughs

**-----**

**Michael Scofield: You're a mercurial man, John. **

**John Abruzzi: I prefer bold.**

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"SUCRE!" The bellow echoed across the prison yard. The thinking part of Lindsey's brain—the one that might have been able to identify the shout as being for him—wasn't working. Instead, the part of him that had been lurking in the human subconscious since man lived in caves and clubbed food to death in order to eat was in full command as he leaped on the much larger man behind him and rode him to the ground. The receiver for the payphone was still in his hand, snapped free from the booth, and he was using it to reduce the other man's face to so much raw meat. Blood splattered everywhere, but for the first time in months, it wasn't _his_ and there was something strangely liberating about that. An animalistic growl issued from the back of his throat as he hit the man again…and again…

"Sucre!" Hands grabbed him under the armpits and hauled him bodily up off the other man, casting him aside. Lindsey hit the grass and rolled, coming to rest on his back, looking up at a man of average size with shoulder length hair hanging in greasy hanks from a receding hairline. "What the hell is wrong with you, boy?" the man hissed, grabbing Lindsey by the front of the shirt and half lifting him up off the ground. His voice was low and gravelly and made Lindsey want to squirm. There was something familiar about his long face with its narrow nose and too full cheeks. Something that made him want to associate this greasy criminal with court rooms and twelve hundred dollar suits.

"Seems to me, Sucre," the man continued, "Every time I turn around, I see you doing something else to screw up Scofield's plan. First you request a cell transfer and he gets stuck with a new cellmate that doesn't sleep. If Scofield's cellmate doesn't sleep, then Scofield can't dig, and if Scofield can't dig, then I can't break out of here. Now, I understand that that little problem has been taken care of, and you're back in your proper place. That's good. However, now you're picking fights in the yard. Just asking to get thrown back into the SHU, aren't you, boy? Can you see how this could further inconvenience me?"

Lindsey's stomach suddenly twisted itself into a knot as he realized where he knew this man from. This was John Abruzzi, Chicago mob boss. The local DAs had spent years trying to pin something on him and make it stick before one of Abruzzi's men had finally rolled on him. Wolfram & Hart hadn't had a hand in any of it, but Lindsey had followed the case on his own time. If his memory served him correctly, Abruzzi was serving something like one hundred and twenty years for murder. No chance at parole, of course. Men like Abruzzi, who had enjoyed a certain measure of criminal fame and power on the outside, often set up their own little empires within the walls of the prisons, especially if they were going to spend the rest of their lives on the inside. Pissing him off would be a _very bad idea._ Lindsey licked his lower lip nervously. "Yes, sir, I can."

"You can what?" Abruzzi demanded, yanking Lindsey even closer to his face so that they were practically nose-to-nose. The former lawyer could smell stale garlic and nicotine on the other man's breath and had to fight not to wrinkle his nose.

"I can see how it could be an inconvenience. Sir." Lindsey looked around—now that the fight was over, the other inmates had wandered off. The man he'd jumped was gone, probably taken to the infirmary. A few COs lingered nearby, but they seemed to be deferring to the mob boss in this little matter. "It won't happen again."

The hand on his shirt released, and Lindsey suddenly fell back against the ground, his head bouncing once against the turf. "Good," Abruzzi said, straightening, "See that it doesn't…because if you continue to hinder Scofield, then we'll be forced to have another one of these little chats, and the next one won't be as pleasant as this…I can promise you that." He gestured to two of the inmates standing nearby, and they fell into step beside him as he headed back across the yard.

Lindsey lay on his back on the grass for a few more minutes, folding his hands over his chest as he contemplated the gray clouds that were slowly rolling by overhead. It was as good a position as any to take stock of his situation. Any which way he looked at it, that situation was not good. Sure, he was out of Hell, but now he was in prison, in another man's body, and that body happened to be sharing a cell with a man who was trying to dig one of the nation's most notorious mob bosses out of prison. And then there was Eve… Just thinking about her made a knot form in his chest, right behind his sternum. It was as if someone were jamming their elbow into it. Made it damn hard to breathe and he had to blink quickly, to keep from tearing up.

"Damn it, baby," he whispered to the sky.

A shadow fell across his face, and Lindsey looked up into the face of his cellmate, Michael Scofield. The young man's face was devoid of expression, but his blue eyes flicked over Lindsey, stopping momentarily to take in each little detail—his bleeding knuckles, the cross wrapped around his wrist, the wrinkles in the front of his shirt, the phone lying nearby in the grass. This man didn't miss much, Lindsey noted. "Abruzzi told me you picked a fight with Trokey. He didn't say why."

"You ever been in love?" Lindsey snapped. Rocking forward on his shoulders, he rolled up into a sitting position, resting his arms on his knees. One hand was bleeding pretty badly. Hitting someone in the face was never a good idea—it hurt you almost as much as it hurt them—but then again picking a fight in a prison didn't exactly fall under the heading of 'Brilliant' either.

Scofield regarded him for a minute. "So this is about Maricruz?"

Lindsey had no idea. So he settled for being evasive. "You didn't answer my question."

"You didn't answer mine."

The sun had peeped out from between two clouds over Scofield's shoulder, hitting Lindsey right in the eye. He blinked and lifted a hand to protect his vision. Back-lit like that, his cellmate looked larger than life. It turned the buzzed hair on his head into a fuzzy halo. "You didn't ask one."

That made him pause. Slowly, he nodded his head. "No, no, I didn't." He took his hand out of his pocket and held it out to Lindsey.

Lindsey accepted the help back up to his feet. "You need some help with the digging?" Time to stop messing around and figure out what the hell he was doing here. Odds were, if the Powers had gone to all this trouble to plop him into prison, it was for something slightly out of the norm, and a prison break would fit the bill. Besides, the next time he saw the Oracle (after he had a few choice words with her about certain topics) he wanted to be able to give her the impression he'd actually _done_ something. From what she'd told him, she wasn't a judge of whether or not he succeeded in these trials—just a guide—but it couldn't hurt to have her squarely on his side. Sure, she was an annoying little so-and-so, but she was also the only one who even knew he was here, in this other man's body.

"I could use someone to keep watch tonight. I think I'll be able to break through before count," Scofield replied. He looked down at Lindsey. "Glad you decided to come back. Just don't go drawing any more attention to yourself."

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COs: Correctional Officers a.k.a. guards

SHU: solitary confinement

count: head count—making sure all the prisoners are in the cells and accounted for


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: I don't own _Buffy: the Vampire Slayer_, _Angel_, or _Prison Break_. I do not make any profit from this. Please, don't sue me. I got nothing. In fact, the IRS currently wants part of my nothing, so you'll have to get in line.

Author's Note: The information on low-latent inhibition came from a Harvard Magazine article called "Ideas Rain In", which can be found online as well. Type "low-latent inhibition" into Google and scroll down until you see Harvard Magazine in the URL. The lyrics Sucre / Lindsey belts out towards the end are from "Sweet Carolina Rain" by Kane, the country music band fronted by Christian Kane (the actor who plays Lindsey).

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Michael Scofield was a man who noticed things. In fact, he noticed too much. "Low-latent inhibition" is what the psychologists called it. It meant that he took in too many details from his environment; he was unable to discriminately ignore stimuli. If he had been any less intelligent, the doctors had told him on more than one occasion, he would have simply been swamped by all the data his brain tried to process. IQ was a sort of shield that allowed him to function. But, as he had been told by the last psychotherapist, it did not mean he was protected against psychosis. Many of the greatest minds in history were credited with low-latent inhibition. Sir Isaac Newton invented calculus and developed the theory of gravity. He also was a manic depressant who suffered at least one complete breakdown. Michael was starting to wonder if maybe he too were going crazy.

It was Sucre that was making him think this. Ever since the Hispanic man had moved back into Michael's cell, there had just been something…_off_ about him. Everything from the way he talked—which was now curiously unaccented—to the way Sucre moved around the cell was different. There were, however, two things—tiny things…miniscule really—that were bothering Michael the most.

First was that when Michael had mentioned the name of Sucre's fiancée in the yard, there had been the briefest moment of incomprehension on the other man's face as if he didn't recognize the name 'Maricruz'. Strange, especially for a man who talked about his fiancée constantly until Michael felt he knew her personally even though he'd never had the chance to meet her.

Second was the cross that had suddenly appeared around Sucre's wrist. Both it and the chain (designed to go around a neck, not a wrist) were made of silver and of fairly plain, utilitarian design. The problem with the cross was that it was a _cross_, not a crucifix. Sucre was devote Roman Catholic—he and Maricruz were supposedly going to have to have their marriage within the Catholic Church—and the religious jewelry he wore was a crucifix, not the plain cross associated more frequently with Protestantism. The crucifix Michael was used to seeing still hung from its chain around Sucre's dark neck—it caught the light and flashed as the man bent down to splash water on his face.

Michael, sitting on the bottom bunk, glanced down at his black plastic watch. The last of the inmates were being brought back from supper. They needed to hang a sheet and get to work if he wanted to get tonight's digging done before the count. Having Haywire—the bona fida psycho who never slept—as a cellmate, however briefly, had set them back several days behind schedule. The thought made Michael's head hurt more than the slight throbbing from the lump where he had smashed his face against the cell bars. It had been a desperate move—desperate enough that when the COs had shown up, they'd automatically assumed that Haywire had done the bashing, not Michael, and carted the other man back off to the ward with the rest of the crazies.

At the sink, Sucre was carefully squeezing toothpaste out onto his brush. Another thing out of character—normally he wasn't nearly as tidy, getting some in the bowl of the sink that Michael would clean away later. "You never answered my question," the short Hispanic man said before sticking the toothbrush in his mouth.

"About what?" Michael looked back down at his watch as he heard the doors to the cells in the block above them begin to slam shut. Three more minutes and he needed to start unbolting the sink.

"I asked if you'd ever been in love." The question came out around the toothbrush.

"I've dated," Michael replied absently. He scooted off the bunk, pulling the sheet free behind him. It only took a few seconds to string it up so it blocked off the back of the cell from the view of the entire cell block. Sure, the other inmates were going to assume he and Sucre were having sex, but the digging was more important than his reputation among the prisoners. From underneath his mattress, he retrieved the bolt he'd shaped into a make-shift allen wrench and went to work loosening the bolts that held the toilet to the wall.

Sucre stepped back, toothbrush tucked forgotten into the corner of his mouth, as he watched Michael remove the bolts and set them aside one-by-one. Once they were all free, he pulled the toilet out and away and surveyed the state of the cinderblock wall behind it. He'd managed to dig out most of the concrete holding the blocks together before Haywire had been transferred into the cell—he should be able to break through tonight. "Hey, Sucre, do me a favor," he said, "I need you to make noise—a lot of noise."

"Why?"

Michael gave him a leveled look of exasperation. "I'm going to kick the blocks out. It's going to make a lot of noise. We don't want the guards to come looking to see what caused the racket."

Sucre looked from the wall with its chunks of missing concrete to the sheet that was blocking their view of the rest of the prison. "What do you want me to do?"

"I don't know…think of something," Michael said as he took a couple of last scrapes at the concrete between two of the blocks.

Sucre ducked under the sheet and a moment later Michael heard him clear his throat. "'It gets wetter and when spring rolls along...'" It wasn't very loud, but it got a shout of "Shut the fuck up!" from the inmates next door. Sucre cleared his throat again. "'It's hotter than hell than when we met last fall / It gets better and better every time we touch…'" He was singing louder now, and more and more of the inmates were starting to get irritated. It sounded as if Sucre wasn't used to singing…at least not with his voice. He kept reaching for notes and then making odd little squeaks when he didn't quite make them. Michael frowned, the tip of his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth. He pulled his foot back, poised to kick.

"'A sticky situation we're in / We're trapped in the car and it's raining again'!" Sucre sang, having given up on being on-key and now just belting it out at the top of his lungs. Beyond the sheet, the angry murmurings were turning into a dull roar as more and more of the prisoners shouted at him to stop. Michael slammed his foot against the weakened section of the wall once…twice…

On the third try, right as the floor alarm went off, the cinderblocks caved. Michael paused—with the walls ringing with the sounds of angry prisoners there was no way the noise had been noticed. He poked his head through the new-made hole and couldn't help but smile as he glanced up and down the narrow tunnel along which the inner workings—plumbing, sewer, gas, electricity—ran.

"Next inmate that opens his mouth goes in the hole!" he heard Bellick shout from somewhere beyond the sheet. The roar of the mob started to die away in response.

Michael scooted back out of the hole and swung the toilet back into place, hurriedly screwing the bolts back on before the COs came by. When he was finished, he rose, yanking the sheet down after tucking the allen wrench back into its hiding place. Sucre had stopped singing and was now just leaning against the bars of the cell, arms folded over his chest, as he gazed off across the cell block.

"I have a question for you," Michael said, wiping the concrete dust from his hands off on his pants.

Sucre turned and looked at him. The look on his face was, for the most part, expressionless, though there was something mournful lurking in his eyes. Yet again, Michael got the feeling that he was looking into the eyes of a completely different man from the one who'd welcomed him "to Prisneyland" on his first day at Fox River. This man wasn't animated enough to Fernando Sucre. Even though Sucre had been in for roughly seven years, there was some part of him that hadn't hardened and been made jaded by life behind bars. Or so Michael had thought. Something very bad had happened to Sucre during his brief stay in the other cell, or…or Michael was going crazy.

"Sure," Sucre prompted him. "What?"

Third thing: Sucre hadn't called him "Fish" once since getting back. That was three things—three very small, but very key things, to the other man's character that weren't ringing true, and Michael had just knocked a whole in the wall behind him. If things had changed as drastically as he was thinking they had with Sucre, then he needed to know now, before any more of the escape plan could potentially be compromised.

"Ok then," Michael said, locking eyes with the other man. "Who the hell are you and just what the fuck happened to Fernando Sucre?"


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I don't own _Prison Break_, _Angel_, or _Buffy: the Vampire Slayer_.

Author's Note: Imzadi, I really have no idea what relationships might come out of this. I'm sort of flying by the seat of my pants, focusing mainly on the plot. –J, I hope this chapter answers some of your "why?" questions. Thanks to the both of you for the reviews.

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**John Abruzzi: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.**

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"Didn't know Sucre had a sister," the prison guard said as the Oracle stepped forward, allowing one of his coworkers to pat her down.

She tossed him a smile as the guard patted down her left leg. "Our family's huge—for reunions, we have to rent a stadium." Actually, she had no idea if that was true or not, but it sounded good. And it explained why Fernando Sucre had a half-sister that wasn't mentioned in his files. Simply shifting her features into a face that belonged to no one was easier than riding inside someone else's skin…and less creepy too.

Convinced that she was unarmed (boy would he be surprised if he knew the truth), the guard let her through into the visiting room. Lindsey was sitting at a table in the middle of the room, lounging back in the chair nonchalantly, though if the jiggling of his knee was anything to go by, he was nervous.

She sat down in the chair across from him. "I see you've still got the cross." She nodded to the piece of jewelry still looped around his wrist. "Keep it on—it's actually hiding you from some of the darker powers."

"Yeah," he said sarcastically, leaning forward so their faces were nearly touching, "It did a damn good job of hiding me from Scofield. In fact, it did such a good job that it gave me away."

"What?" Cass yelped, a little louder than she intended to. Sheepishly, she gave the startled guards a small smile before turning her attention back to Lindsey. "What the fuck does that mean?"

"Fernando Sucre's a Roman Catholic, you idiot," he snarled back. "This—" he snatched angrily at the chain, making the cross spin wildly, "—isn't Roman Catholic, and you neglected to mention the cellmate you stuck me with is some sort of freaky genius who notices when little details like this are screwed up."

Cass sank back in the chair. "We're screwed. We're so fucking screwed!" She tilted her head back, praying to the God of Ceiling Tiles for strength. If Scofield knew, then he might find someone who'd believe him when he said his cellmate was not his cellmate but an imposter. In a place like this, she wasn't sure who that would be, but if Fate was against them, there'd be someone…and Fate was always against her. Days like this, she wished she hadn't given up her oracular powers. Sure, she'd gotten the ability to shapeshift and teleport in return, but ever since she'd stopped being able to see the future, Fate had gotten into a bad habit of rearing up and biting her in the ass.

She lowered her gaze back down to Lindsey and noticed he was smirking. "What?"

"Scofield's not going to say anything."

"How can you be so sure?"

Lindsey leaned farther forward and gestured for her to come in closer. Cass complied. "He's breaking out," the former lawyer whispered, his mouth right beside her ear. When she stiffened in surprise, he laughed. "He's got a hole in our cell leading to a maintenance passage. From there, I don't know where's he's planning to go, but if the man is smart enough to figure out that Sucre's been body-snatched then I think he could get out if he wanted to."

"So you're big test is to help a man break out of prison?" Cass asked in disbelief. "I think the idea of the Gauntlet was to prove you're done with the side-switching and backstabbing."

Lindsey withdrew a little, giving her a smug smile that made her want to slap him—but maybe that was just the panic in her talking. "Ever heard of Lincoln Burrows?"

Cass shook her head.

"It was all the news could talk about five years ago. Supposedly, Lincoln Burrows shot Terrence Steadman—does _that_ name sound familiar?"

She shook her head again.

Lindsey sighed. "Not too up on current events are you?"

"Technically, I died a couple of thousand years ago."

He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something but then closed it again. "Point taken. All right, Steadman was the brother of the American vice president. Supposedly, Burrows ambushed him in a parking garage as part of a pre-arranged hit and shot him to death. He's now on death row. Apparently, his last appeal got rejected a couple of weeks ago."

"Is this going somewhere?"

He smirked again, and she could feel the urge to wipe it off his face rise in her. She settled for tightening her hands around the bamboo handle of her purse. "Scofield is Burrows' half-brother. He robbed a bank and purposely got caught so he would be locked in here with his brother…"

"To break him out," Cass finished for him. Still didn't explain anything, but they were getting closer to an answer, and from the smirk still plain on Lindsey McDonald's face, he had more up his sleeve. "You keep saying 'supposedly shot'? You know a different story?"

"It was a set-up. Lilah Morgan's work, not mine, but I helped out a bit in the end." He leaned forward conspiratorially again. "I'm not sure of the details, but I do know that Terrence Steadman didn't die in that parking garage five years ago. Burrows was just a small-time punk with a colorful rap sheet—once the legal system attached him to the 'assassination' they railroaded him straight to death row."

Suddenly, it was all making sense—imagine that. "So, a man you, in part, helped to frame, is scheduled to die for a crime he didn't commit, and, in fact, his last hope is that his half-brother—who just happens to be your cellmate—can break him out." She laughed. "Those bastards…"

"Who?"

"My bosses—I don't think this could get anymore convoluted." She ran her hands through her hair in frustration. "I guess you follow Scofield—help him dig, do whatever you can to get his brother out." Her mind was totally blown; she couldn't seem to think. Her brain kept leaping from one possible avenue of thought to another. It was worse than trying to decipher the possible branches of the future. At least then, she was only expected to spit out a couple of nonsensical couplets. This was not what she'd had in mind when the Powers That Be had told her to guide Lindsey through the Gauntlet. She thought he'd get clear-cut moral tests acted out in demon realms. Demons, she understood. Humans…they were still a bit of a mystery.

"Listen," Lindsey said, "When we get out—if we get out—they are going to be hunting us. It was the vice president's _brother_, we're talking about. That means that the public is going to want justice, and the people who hired Wolfram & Hart are going to be scrambling to get Burrows out of the way. The Secret Service is probably involved. We're going to need a place to hide and some serious protection."

Cass rubbed a hand wearily over her face. "All you've got right now is me."

She could see him thinking—the little hamster squeaking in its wheel inside his mind. "Then…then you're going to have to find a way to clear Burrows. That'll at least get the cops off our backs. The conspirators, we'll have to deal with as they come."

"And how am I supposed to do that?"

"Most of Burrows' conviction hung on a single piece of evidence—security camera footage of him shooting Steadman."

She whistled. "When you guys set someone up, you really set them up."

"It wasn't that hard to do. I don't think Lilah even had to use magic to make it happen. Wolfram & Hart's tech department was pretty damn good. Anyway, find proof that the video tape was doctored and turn your findings over to the authorities. I'd go straight to the governor if I were you, so your stuff doesn't get 'lost' in the system." He paused. "Or the media—they'd have a field day with this."

"One problem with that: Angel reduced Wolfram & Hart's offices to a giant, smoking hole in the ground. I think your proof is gone," she reminded him.

He shook his head. "All of Wolfram & Hart's computer files were backed up at a storage facility in Houston. What we're looking for should be there."

The Oracle felt the final couple of pieces fall together in her head. Lindsey had obviously been thinking about this for a couple of days now. Whatever his faults, the man wasn't dumb.

"Hey, Sucre, visiting time's up!" one of the guards called as he strode over. "Say good-bye to your sister."

"Get the proof," Lindsey ordered as the correctional officer hauled him up and out of the chairs.

"Keep yourself alive," she commanded in return. "You don't want to see Hell again, do you?"


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I don't own _Angel_, _Buffy: The Vampire Slayer_, or _Prison Break_. The lyrics Cass sings are from "God is a DJ" by Pink from the _Try This_ album. 'Bag of Share', which Lorne mentions is not one of my phrases. I have no idea who coined it. Please don't sue me.

Author's Note: Thanks, Imzadi, for the review. There's a more extensive author's note at the end of this chapter.

-----

"Hey, guys, guess what I…" Cass shouted as she shouldered open the door to her office. She'd left Lorne and Anya looking through files, trying to find the answers Lindsey had just given her. However, the man currently sitting behind her desk was definitely not Lorne. For one, he wasn't green, and for another, his suit was a very boring gray though expertly cut. "Oh," she greeted the newcomer, "It's you."

"You don't sound thrilled to see me, Oracle," the man said.

Cass stepped all the way into the office and shut the door behind her, quickly taking stock of her surroundings. The afghan was in a heap at one end of the couch where Anya had been napping. Neither she nor Lorne were in the office, though the stack of papers on the edge of the desk was proof that they'd been working in here at one point. "You're my supervisor, Gabriel; a visit from you usually spells trouble."

He smirked. "You're not in trouble this time, though I would like to talk to you about certain aspects of your methodology at some point, but that will have to wait—there have been some serious developments in one of your cases." He held out an unlabeled manila folder.

She took it and flipped it open. All that lay inside was a single, small newspaper clipping. "'Los Angeles Family Found Dead in Home; Son Suspected in Killings'," she read aloud. "What's this have to do with anything?"

"Look at the son's name," Gabriel suggested.

Cass skimmed the article. "'Reilly'…'Connor Reilly'." The name meant squat to her, though the look on Gabriel's face said she should. His presence in her office was making her nervous as all get-out. As she told Lorne, this was her first batch of cases working under Gabriel in Human Affairs. She was still sort of on probation. If she screwed up, it was back to the ranks of the foot soldiers for her, and these days, the Power didn't let the foot soldiers do jack shit.

Gabriel's mouth twitched towards what might have been another smirk. "He's better known as 'Connor Angel', the son of two vampires."

Head smack. Cass felt her ears burn. "Well, this is no good," she mumbled as she hurriedly read through the entire clipping. There wasn't much—certainly no details about how the family (mother Colleen, father Laurence, and sister Rachel) were killed. The police would be keeping those cards close to their chests in hopes of using them to trap the killer. Connor wasn't actually named as the chief suspect—that was the newspaper's fabrication—the police merely wanted him for questioning.

"I am guessing that you haven't even made contact with the boy yet." The note of disapproval in Gabriel's voice was unmistakable.

The Oracle set the folder on the corner of the desk and then scrambled up on the back of the couch to get at the top of the shelves behind it. "I've been slightly busy with Lindsey and the Gauntlet," she muttered out of the side of her mouth. She shoved aside a shoebox full of demon horns and pulled out a thick file folder labeled 'Connor Angel'.

"Ah, the infamous Oracular filing system," Gabriel murmured.

Cass hopped down off the couch. "_I_ know where everything is. Consider it another level of security."

"Serving under Michael for so many years has instilled his trademark paranoia in you. And, if you never lose anything, why did you tell the Armory that you had misplaced you sword?"

She swallowed. "I said that I know where everything in my office is, not that I never lose stuff."

She couldn't tell whether or not he believed that. But after looking her over for a moment, Gabriel gave a little shrug and continued on. "Make arrangements for Lindsey McDonald and any other open cases, and then attend to Connor immediately. You will most likely end up working jointly with Cordelia since she is handling the boy's father." Gabriel rose and straightened his tie. "Do try and play nice."

-----

The Oracle tracked Lorne and Anya back to one of the many lounges scattered along the Hall. They were sitting together at one of the tables, eating sandwiches, and talking to…Fernando Sucre? Yes, she realized as she approached the table, that was definitely the man whose body Lindsey was currently borrowing. He was seated as far around the round table as he could get from Lorne, picking at what looked like tuna fish on rye, his dark eyes darting from Lorne to Anya and back again.

"He's not going to eat your soul," Cass told the short Hispanic man as she pulled out the chair on his left.

Sucre jumped, knocking his chair over as he scrambled to get away from her. "Where'd you come from?" he demanded, eyes wild.

"Through the door…" She pointed to the lounge's entrance.

He squinted at her suspiciously, making the sign of the cross. "Are you human?"

Cass laughed. She couldn't help it. There would never be any chance of her mistaking Sucre for Lindsey, even when they wore the same face. No mistaking at all. "I was human once, when I was still alive."

Wrong thing to say. It backed him up even farther into the corner.

"I'm on the side of the angels." She smiled and held out her hand to him—trying to look as harmless as possible. In the back of her mind, she wished she was wearing the face and hair that she'd used the night she and Lorne had gone out dancing. Then, she'd just slapped it on, trying to find something the demon would find fun. And it had been fun, that night in Vegas. Sin City had shown them its absolute best side in the smoky basement bars and gaudy little dance clubs and, of course, the room in the Bellagio with that damn fruit plate. She couldn't really explain to herself why she hadn't used that face since then. Maybe because she'd been so focused on Lindsey and with him, she had chosen a sleeker, harder persona. But changing now would probably send Sucre straight up to the light fixture and then they'd never get him down.

"I know this is a phenomenal amount of stuff to take in, especially for someone who'd had no exposure to any of it, but you have to believe that we're not going to hurt you," she said.

"Yeah," Anya piped up, "We're the good guys."

Sucre stilled eyed them warily, but he righted his chair and sat back down. "What do you want from me?"

Lorne and Anya were suddenly very busy with their food as Cass sighed inwardly. That was the number one question she didn't want to answer. "Um…I'm helping a man try to escape from Hell," she finally said.

Sucre paused, chewing his tuna fish absently as he considered her explanation. Swallowing, he asked, "Did he deserve to be down there?"

"That's what we're in the process of trying to figure out," Cass continued. "He's done a lot of skuzzy things…"

"Sold his soul to evil for a six-figure salary," Lorne muttered into his sandwich.

"And then walked away from that job." Cass glared at the demon before turning back to Sucre. "He's been a moral yo-yo his entire adult life, but when he died, he was fighting a major battle for the forces of good—the Powers That Be."

"God," the young man said, his hand going to the silver crucifix he wore around his neck.

"The PTB are more like angels, I think, but anyway, this man was betrayed and murdered during that last battle, so there are people who think he deserves a second chance…"

"More like his two hundred and second," Lorne interjected.

Cass scowled at the demon man. "Lorne, can I see you outside?" It wasn't a request—Gabriel's surprise visit had frazzled her more than she wanted to admit, and the anagogic demon was being downright snippy.

She headed out to the Hall, Lorne on her heels. He carefully closed the lounge door behind him. "I feel like a third grader who'd been naughty, disrupting class." The comment was very light, testing.

Cass put her hands on her hips. "Yeah, well, then I'm the teacher and my boss is sitting in on lecture today to observe."

"The PTB are breathing down your neck, huh, angel-wings? Never fun, I know." He tried to pat her shoulder comfortingly, but she shrugged the gesture off.

"What is your deal with Lindsey?" the Oracle demanded. "I'm trying to ease Sucre into an understanding of the situation without making him go ape-shit on us and your trashing Lindsey at every turn is not helping!"

Lorne was very carefully focusing his red eyes on something beyond her shoulder. Since this was the Hall, and everything was uniformly white and boring, he was therefore trying to avoid meeting her eyes.

"Lorne…"

"I never asked for a Higher Power Jiminy Cricket," he grumbled after a moment.

She held up a finger. "We already established this back in Vegas. I'm being nosey here because I thought there was something bothering you, and I wanted to see if I could help."

He arched a brow in disbelief.

Cass ducked her head, kicking the wall gently. The toe of her boot left a black streak across the white paint. "Ok, I'm also annoyed because you're making my job harder than it already is."

Lorne leaned against the wall, folding his arms over his chest. "I just get this antsy feeling each time you mention Lindsey's name, pumpkin tart," he admitted.

She mimicked his pose—maybe this talk would go easier if they couldn't make contact. "I think it's called 'guilt'. You were—excuse the term—demonizing him in there."

"And you were painting such pretty little angel wings for him."

Cass snorted as she tried to picture Lindsey with white feathered wings. Mentally, she added a halo to the picture—dented, a little crooked, appropriate for someone who'd fallen from grace so many times. Then, she stuffed the little mental image into the formal white robes of a Higher Power. The result made her giggle.

"There's a noise I like to hear," Lorne murmured. "Care to share?"

The Oracle shook her head. "Just a goofy picture in my head."

"Sing a little, and I'll see it."

"Um…" Cass was fine with singing in front of people—the trip to the karaoke bar had been a kick—but coming up with something to sing on the spot wasn't easy. "Um…If God is a DJ / Life is a dance floor / Love is the rhythm / You are the music / If God is a DJ / Life is a dance floor / You get what you're given / It's all how you use it…and I feel dumb."

"Don't be, honey cakes, you did fine—on-key, in-tune, and all that jazz," he assured her. Then, he chuckled. "Nice touch with the crooked halo."

"Thank you." She leaned over a little to rest her head against the green demon's shoulder. "Are you ever going to forgive Angel for ordering you to kill Lindsey?"

"Probably—carrying grudges for too long wears me down."

Cass nodded, the sound of her hair rubbing against the polyester of his tomato red suit coat rasping unnaturally loud in her ear. "Are you ever going to forgive yourself for going to through with it?"

He sighed. "That's the real question now, isn't it, sugar bug?"

-----

They just stood there for a few minutes, thinking. Cass finally broke the peace by mumbling, "We'd better go back inside. Save Sucre from Anya."

"Oh, dear Lord, yes," Lorne agreed. "What were thinking leaving that poor boy with her?"

"Did you ever figure out why she was on my little list?"

Lorne nodded. "The PTB don't have the foggiest where to send her now that she's pushing up the daisies. Our little golden buttercup with her copious bag of share started life as a human, switched to vengeance demon raining ruin and castration down on unfaithful fellows, got turned back into a human, then went demon again, then human, and now, dead."

"Human, demon, human, demon…damn, no wonder They're confused." The Oracle brought a hand up to rub her forehead and sighed. "How'd she die?"

"Helping the Slayers take on something dubbed 'The First' in Sunnydale, which earned her a big gold star in the PTB's book."

"Even though her morality is as dubious as Lindsey's. Do you like her?"

Lorne laughed. "She's as much fun as Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson teamed together—she had the Receiving Office convert all of her lifetime accomplishments into cash."

"Odd, but that could come in handy. Listen, Lorne, I was wondering if you'd be willing to help me out again." She turned so she was facing him, her shoulder pressed against the wall.

The green demon looked down at her expectantly, his red eyes friendly. Quite a dramatic change from the hostility he'd directed at her in the karaoke bar. Cass had looked back over his file, trying to match the cold, sterile facts found within the folder to the warm-hearted demon she'd gone dancing with. She'd come away thinking that since leaving Wolfram & Hart, Lorne had gone out of his way to isolate himself, which was completely against his nature. As the host and proprietor of Caritas, he'd been surrounded night after night with folk of all walks. From there, he'd gone on Angel Investigations, which, if she'd read between the lines correctly, had been something of a family for its members. A family that had begun to crumble when Angel's son had been abducted. Working at the law firm had just finished it off. Now, though he had come reluctantly, Lorne was back among people again, interacting and loving it. The Pylean demon was definitely a people-person. The Oracle allowed herself a small smile—this was how she was going to get him back in the saddle: by surrounding him with people and just letting him do his thing. The empathy demon could not help but be empathetic.

"This is a huge favor," she informed him. "Goliath, gargantuan, huge."

"Cass, I told you I'd help, sweet cheeks. What is it?"

"I have to go to Los Angeles. Technically, I should've already left."

"Angel?"

She shook her head. "No, one of my other charges, but my boss said that I'd probably end up working together with Cordelia. Problem is, I just figured out why the hell Lindsey got dumped in a jail cell in Illinois."

"Really?" Lorne straightened, his brows shooting up in surprise.

She nodded, smiling. "Lindsey's cellmate, Scofield, is the half-brother of Lincoln Burrows, who's on death row. Wolfram & Hart framed Burrows—I need you to go to Houston, Texas and visit the law firm's archives and see if you can find something that'll prove Lincoln Burrows was set up. Lindsey mentioned something about a video tape. You think you could do that—you can take Anya with you if you want." She gave him a pleading look.

Lorne shook his head. "You are about as bad as Angel at the puppy dog eyes, cinnamon crumb."

Cass batted her eyelashes, playing it up.

He rolled his ruby eyes. "All right, all right, your cuteness wins—I'll head down to the Lone Star State and see if I can rustle up your tape."

She beamed. "Thanks, Lorne." She gave him a quick hug. "I'll supply you with a human-looking face and a portal there."

"Just say 'hi' to Cordy for me."

"Will do."

-----

A/N: …and so begins our first crossover with "Trinity" (to read, go look in my profile). There's probably some overlap in readership anyway.

I had to do this—wrote myself into another corner what with Connor being on Cass's list back in chapter one and me needing a way to break the recent syrupy sweetness that happening in "Trinity" before my teeth rotted (Connor's always good for drama). I have no real overarching plan for these fics—mostly flying back the seat of my pants. "Trinity" lends itself to a framework what with the four boys needing to be restored, but I'm finding all kinds of ways to screw around inside the frame itself. This fic's also operating on the Rule of Four (the four lost souls that the PTB don't know what the hell to do with: Lorne, Lindsey, Anya, and Connor), and Lindsey's running of the Gauntlet added even more structure (the Tests of the Wolf, the Ram, and the Hart). When I decided to cross Dea Ex Machina over with the series _Prison Break_, it was with this idea in mind—Lindsey will help with the escape to save the life of a man set up by Wolfram & Hart. A fitting part of his redemption, and it allows me to write an alternative to the shitty conspiracy offered by the _Prison Break_ writers. Anyway, enough rambling.


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: I don't own _Angel_, _Prison Break_, or _Buffy: the Vampire Slayer_. Please don't sue me.

Author's Note: Got real hyped up today and, after finishing chapter 12, just kept going. Also started chapter 12 of "Trinity", which had to be delayed until I could free up Cass for the crossover.

-----

Lindsey frowned as he watched Scofield tuck something away under his mattress. "What's with the eggbeater?"

"We're going to use it to drill through a pipe," his cellmate replied.

"A pipe?" Try as he might, he couldn't quite keep the disbelief out of his voice. Living and working with Michael Scofield was enough to make his head hurt. "Are we talking about a little metal pipe like that one?" He pointed to the drain pipe for the sink.

Scofield shook his head. "Concrete drainage pipe."

The man was planning on drilling through concrete with an eggbeater. Right. Thinks had made more sense back in Hell. Lindsey was not a stupid man—he never would have gotten into law school if he was—but Scofield sometimes made him feel like an idiot child. He boosted himself up onto the cell's upper bunk, rolling over on to his back and staring up at the ceiling. A good thinking position. He supposed it was possible to make a couple of precisely placed holes to weaken the concrete as a whole and then punch through. Stress points. Scofield claimed to have been a structural engineer before focusing on freeing his brother. If anybody could calculate those points, it would be him. But still—holes in concrete with an eggbeater. "That's going to take time."

"What is?" Michael asked from the bunk below.

"The drilling—how are you going to find the time to make the holes?" Lindsey had learned one major thing over these past couple of days in Fox River—inmates had no privacy. They ate with dozens of other men, showered with them, worked at PI and wandered the yard with them. "We're under the guards' eye constantly." It harkened back to his days at Wolfram & Hart—always looking over his shoulder. COs, Holland Manners—they were all ruthlessly waiting for him to fuck up so they could come down on him hard. Bellick, the head guard, was just as brutal as Manners, though Lindsey's former boss had hid it better behind a smooth mask of, well, manners. His perpetual politeness had done nothing to spare him when Angel had locked all of them in with Darla and Drusilla though.

His mind turned briefly to Darla, but those memories hurt almost as much as those he carried of Eve…though the pain had dulled a little with time. He raised his wrist, with the cross, over his face and thumbed the silver charm, pressing it into the place where his scar should have been. Of all the stupid things to miss right now, that's what he missed the most—that stupid scar around his wrist from the transplant. He smacked the charm, sending it spinning on the chain over the top of his wrist.

"How do we make the guards look elsewhere for however long it takes?" he asked,

The springs of the lower bunk creaked as Scofield shifted. "A riot."

"What?"

"We need a riot. There was one a couple of days before you got here—in all the confusion, nobody'll pay attention to what we're doing."

The idea was nuts, which meant it would work or so Lindsey's experience told him. He'd tracked down a newspaper, looking for articles about what had happened in L.A. A massive fire and a terrorist attack was what the newspaper he'd found in the yard had said. The terrorist attack was Angel's doing—bring the building down around his own idiotic ears—but the fire must have been part of Wolfram & Hart's retaliation. Lindsey could only imagine what sort of force they had brought against Angel and his pathetic attempt at a coup. A riot of demons, perhaps, not neatly wiped from the minds of the city's inhabitants, which was why the mundane excuses of fire and attack. If he'd just had another five or six years… He sighed and batted at the cross again.

"It'll work," he heard Scofield say so softly that he didn't know if the man was talking to him or to himself.

The idea was nuts, but Scofield would pull it off. There was an unease between the two men—had been since Michael had confronted him about not being the real Sucre. The other man had listened closely, his face expressionless as he processed Lindsey's explanation. Lindsey had told the truth. He couldn't think of a better lie. Explaining it to someone who'd had—from what he could tell—no previous exposure to the supernatural had been awkward, but Scofield had been so sure that Lindsey was _not_ Sucre that he was forced to accept the truth. After he had absorbed it, he'd made Lindsey swear that he wouldn't squeal about the hole in the wall behind the toilet. That had been Lindsey's cue to pitch in. Even before he'd discovered the Lincoln Burrows connection, he figured he was probably supposed to play along, at least for a little while.

The lights in the cellblock dimmed, signaling that it was time to sleep. "How are you going to start a riot?" Lindsey asked as he rolled over on to his side.

"I'll turn up the heat," was Scofield's cryptic answer.


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: I don't own _Prison Break_, _Angel_, or _Buffy: The Vampire Slayer_.

A/N: Thanks to Imzadi and –J, as always, for the reviews.

-----

Lorne watched as the Oracle took a green marker out of the pocket of her cargo pants and started to sketch mystic symbols on the white linoleum of the Hall floor. "A portal spell?" She'd come back from wherever she'd vanished to wearing preppy boy's clothes and walking stiffly. Even now, as she drew, she was acting like she was uncomfortable.

"Fastest way to get you to Houston," she answered absently. Cass glanced past him to Anya. She chewed on the lid of the marker for a minute, then went back to scribbling. "This will put you out at Bush Intercontinental Airport. You got the badges I ordered?"

Lorne held up a plastic badge nearly identical to the one he'd used to get in and out of Wolfram & Hart's offices when he still worked there. Only this one had a picture of a blond man. "Carson Lulling, Singapore branch?"

Cass looked up from her work, a frown wrinkling her pale forehead. "That's a crappy name."

"I didn't pick it, princess," he said, but he clipped it to the lapel of the very bland navy suit. Another piece of the disguise that a messenger had brought to Cass's office while the Oracle was off doing whatever she did when she wasn't trying to help him. The PTB had produced a fairly thorough get up for him and Anya. Business suits, briefcases full of lawyer-like papers, fake drivers' licenses—the works. All of Anya's information said she was a 'Sharon Lulling'. He glanced down at the photo on the badge. Looks like he was going to be playing Big Brother to their favorite perky little Goldilocks. "Though I'm mighty interested in how you're going to make me look pale and human."

The Oracle's tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth as she worked on her portal spell. "Take a closer look at the badge," she muttered. "They were supposed to make the picture look like you—minus the green skin and horns."

Lorne reached up and rubbed a hand self-consciously over a horn. "I'm rather fond of these beauties, you know."

"I know." Circle done, she stood up, wiping her green-stained hands on her pants. "They look good on you. I'm just going to do a glamour to make you look like Carson Lulling. Your horns will still be there, under the illusion." She reached up a hand and passed it over Lorne's face.

A tingling sensation raced down his spine. It felt like there were a million ants marching along the underside of his skin. He raised a hand in front of his face and watched in fascination as the skin turned from green and scaly to smooth and Caucasian. His nails, typically the dark red of a very fresh bruise, slowly turned different colors of seashell-like pink. "Holy Moses!" he exclaimed. "Angel-wings, when you do a glamour, you do a glamour!"

Cass smiled and dropped her hand. "It'll last for up to a month—not that I have any plans for you to be in Houston that long. I just want to be careful."

"Are Wolfram & Hart's hoodoo detectors going to be able to pick up your handiwork?"

She shook her head. "This glamour bit's older than dirt—something I was actually born with, though I never got to use it. It's so out-of-style that I doubt anyone remembers how it works."

"And if it doesn't, pumpkin heart?"

"Then you and Anya get to…_improvise_."

"Have I mentioned lately that I don't fight? I'm not a fighter—I'm more the kind of guy who stays home and cheers for the good guys on the television." He fussed with his tie. He had a deep-seated urge to swap it out for something less Men's Warehouse and something more lamé. Silver would look good. It would be just the thing to take this boring old suit out of Yuppieville and into Tinseltown.

Cass put her hands on his shoulders and looked up at him with big solemn green eyes. "There's no reason for the two of you to get into combat, but if you find yourselves in trouble, do you think you can get out?"

Anya came over, her navy pumps clicking on the floor. "Don't worry—if we get into any trouble, I'll beat the bad guys to death with their own ribs," the former vengeance demon assured them with a perky smile.

The Oracle looked over at her charge in disbelief. "You can do that?"

"Well…I haven't in a couple decades, but I'm sure I could get back into the swing of things, no problem."

"Uh-huh." Cass turned back to Lorne. "If things go sour and you can't talk your way out, run like hell."

"How're they supposed to run if they're half way 'cross the country?" That question came from Fernando, who had been following Anya around since lunch like a lost little puppy. There didn't seem to be much less for him to do—all the magazines in the waiting room they'd found him in were at least a year old and mostly having to do with fresh water fishing. Anya was probably the least threatening of the little group, Lorne supposed. She didn't shapeshift, she didn't have horns, and once you got past her bag of share, the former vengeance demon was a downright sweetie. If you could ignore all the talk about castration. Fernando apparently had a fiancée waiting for him to get out of prison—a women named Maricruz, who if Sucre's overly enthusiastic description of her was accurate was more beautiful than half of Hollywood. It was obvious the poor kid was crazy in love with her. He'd knocked over a liquor store just to buy her an engagement ring. If Lorne had still been in the entertainment industry, it wouldn't have taken two seconds to sell that script—the passion, the angst…

While he was daydreaming, Cass had fished a small jewelry box out of one of her pants' many pockets and snapped it open. Inside rested a tiny, gold, sword-shaped tie tack. "This is a one use portal spell. If the shit should really hit the fan and you find yourselves in need of a quick escape, pull the backing off, jab yourself with the pin, and a portal back to here will open for fifteen seconds. It's about as subtle as a hand grenade, so use it only if there's serious trouble. Otherwise, I'll come check on you guys tomorrow night and make sure you're doing ok."

"You just carry one of those things around in your pocket?" Fernando asked.

"I grabbed it from my desk on the way down here," Cass snapped at him. Looked like their darling Oracle was feeling a bit cranky this evening, Lorne thought. He wondered if it had anything to do with her back, which was obviously bothering her.

However, it didn't look like there'd be time for any of his special brand of talk therapy, seeing as how she'd just activated her portal. The green markings on the linoleum let off a flare of bright light and when that faded, the air above them seemed to shimmer like a heat wave. "Next stop," Cass said, "Houston."


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: I don't own _Prison Break_, _Angel_, or _Buffy: The Vampire Slayer_.

-----

The room the portal emptied them into was cool, plush, and royal blue. Well, at least the carpet and furniture upholstery were. Anya wrinkled her nose at the room's smell…well, lack of smell. It was that super-clean "there's no smell here!" sort of smell that she associated with airports. "We're at an airport," she announced, pleased with herself for having figured it out.

Lorne—who now looked human and sort of yummy, in an orgasm friend kind of way…not that she would ever consider having an orgasm with the Host…not that he wasn't a nice person, it was just that she wasn't quite sure whether or not he liked to have sex with women—turned to her. "Cass said we'd be popping into the Houston airport, sugar pie."

"She did? I guess I wasn't listening to that part. She talks a lot."

"She's just got a case of new-job-nerves. Give our fearless leader some time to get her size 6's under her. Then she'll give Wolfram & Hart a real run for their money."

"So we're really in Houston?" The question didn't come from the empathy demon—it came from Fernando. He was standing in the corner of the room, still in his prison clothes, with his hands stuffed into his pockets. He was even yummier than Lorne, but he had a girlfriend that he was _very_ devoted to. No worries about his Maricruz wanting vengeance on him anytime in the near future, Anya had decided as she'd listen to him talk. She sighed inwardly. Apparently, being dead didn't help you meet available men. Of course, she'd spent most of her life hating them, but falling in love with Xander had made her not-hate them a great deal.

Fernando took a step forward, putting himself in front of a window that looked out on the tarmac, and Anya realized she could see a plane taking off through him. Frowning, she stepped closer and jabbed at him with her finger. Instead of poking him in the arm, the finger passed through him as if he weren't even there.

"Hey! What're…" He looked down, his dark eyes widening in shock. "I'm…I'm…"

"A ghost," she supplied for him.

"Not a ghost, really," Lorne said as he came over to look at Fernando's sudden change in condition. "From the way Cass described it, your soul was separate from your body, amigo—that's what we had lunch with today and that's what we're staring at with our peepers right now."

"You're not dead," Anya clarified, "So you can't be a ghost."

For some reason that didn't seem to calm him much. "But everybody looking will think I'm a ghost, and we just can't walk around telling everybody that your friend's borrowing my body. They'd think we're all loco!" He patted nervously at his chest, his hands actually touching it since they were just as insubstantial as the rest of him.

"Maybe nobody else will be able to see you," she suggested.

"We can't take him into Wolfram & Hart in this state," Lorne said as he sat down in one of the room's armchairs. "They installed ghost-detecting machines after that fiasco with Spike out in LA."

Anya's ears perked up at the name. "Spike? Was he a vampire with a black coat that he never takes off and bleached hair?" The last time she'd seen Spike—or any of her friends from Sunnydale for that matter—had been when they'd gone to face the First. She'd looked for the rest of them after she'd gotten up to the afterlife but hadn't found any of them. Maybe they'd all lived, though if Spike was making the evil lawyers install special machines then he was probably a ghost.

"Calls himself the 'Big Bad'?" Lorne finished the description. "Yes, that's our Spike—he and Angel fought like cats and dogs the entire time he was at Wolfram & Hart. And when I say cats and dogs, I really mean tigers and wolves, especially after Freddie-kins managed give the boy his body back."

Fernando looked obviously confused. "I don't get it—who's this 'Spike' ya'll are talking about? Is he one of the good guys?"

Anya nodded empathetically. "He just tries to be bad. Well, he was bad, and then he got a chip put in his head by the military so he could only hit demons, and then the chip got taken out and he got his soul back and went all crazy from it, but he was getting better the last time I saw him."

"He was closer to being on the straight-and-narrow than our boy Angel was," Lorne said mournfully. He looked around the room sadly. "Can we adjoin this little confab to the nearest bar? I feel the need for a Sea Breeze coming on."

There didn't seem to be a better time than the present to see just who could see Fernando besides them. The room they were in looked to be one of the airport's VIP lounges. When they stepped out into the main concourse, the roar of the crowds filled Anya's ears. Dozens of people, either burdened down with luggage or wearing uniforms, hurried past. They stood in the doorway, just outside the rush of traffic, as they got their bearings. "I think there's restaurants and stuff that way," Anya declared after a moment, "I can smell steak."

"Lead on then, ladybug!" Lorne declared with a sweep of his hand.

Anya paid special attention to the faces going by as she led them through the crowds to the small food court area. Nobody seemed to notice the mostly-transparent man walking along beside her. Fernando was doing his best to weave through the crowd like a normal human, but every now and then an elbow or a rolling suitcase would pass through him. The people the elbows belonged to didn't seem to notice. The suitcases certainly didn't.

"I think we're the only ones who can see you," she said out of the corner of her mouth.

He looked visibly relieved.

-----

A/N: This is not the chapter it was supposed to be. I've been away for so long that I'd forgotten what I intended to write here. Oh, well, at least they're off to a good start in Houston. Oh, and thanks to –J and Imzadi for the reviews, as always.


	13. Riots, Drills, & the Devil 1

Disclaimer: I don't own _Prison Break_, _Buffy: the Vampire Slayer_, or _Angel_. Nor do I profit from writing this. Please don't sue me. Most of the action and some of the lines are taken directly from _Prison Break_ episode #6: "Riots, Drills, and the Devil (pt. 1)".

---

Lindsey sat on the top bunk in his and Scofield's cell, jiggling his leg nervously. His cellie had gone into the wall a good five minutes ago, and it was only a matter of time before the bulls came by to do a check. He'd dug some paper and a pen out of Sucre's stuff and had spent the past half hour trying to write. It wasn't working too well.

_Dear Darla,_

_Baby, I know you're dead. If you were still alive, LA would be burning right now, Wolfram & Hart's precious apocalypse or no. Was Angel the one who did you in? Did he finely grow a big enough pair to do what he was so sure needed to be done? Or did he send one of his lackeys after you because he couldn't get over the failure of not being able to save you? Was it your death that drove him right into the Senior Partners' arms? _

He snorted as he reread what he'd written. It wasn't much of a love letter, but he wasn't feeling much love. It'd felt like there was a bruise in his chest, right behind the sternum. Part of him wondered if maybe he'd taken a punch in that fight out in the yard. That'd been a week ago, but if a rib was bruised or something…

Nah, he was just kidding himself. There wasn't a physical reason for the pain. It was just the pain of losing Eve. He'd tried calling her back—twice. The first time, the call had rung once and then gone straight to voice mail. The second, he'd been told by that annoying electronic voice that the number was no longer in service. She'd cut off his only line to her. That said more than any of the Host's dire predictions.

"Bed check!"

_Shit, looks like the check is now._ Tossing the notepad aside, he hopped down off the bunk and grabbed the mirror he used for look-out duty. Banging it against the toilet should make enough noise that Scofield would notice and get his ass back here before the CO came by. No—no time for that. Grabbing the pillow from his bunk (a fairly new one replaced soon after he'd swapped places with the real Sucre), he stuffed it under Michael's blanket, trying to plump it and Scofield's own pillow into a vaguely human shape. The bull would have to be an idiot to fall for a trick this old, but it was dark, and Lindsey didn't have a better plan. _Thank God, Scofield's so lanky. Those pillows would never pass for a fat man._

There was nothing left to do but hop back up onto his bunk and pretend to be asleep. He sprawled, letting one arm flop over the side, creating the picture of a man deep in dreamland. The COs' flashlights bobbed like demented will o' the wisps out in the cell block. Lindsey held his breath.

The sound of the toilet scraping across the floor cued him to let it out. Lindsey rolled over on to his stomach, peering down through the bar on the headboard of the bunk as Scofield squirmed out of the hole behind the toilet.

"Bulls are coming!" he hissed.

Michael's eyes went wide for a moment, then he shoved the toilet back into place with his foot and scrambled across the floor on his hands and knees. Pulling one of the pillows out from under the blanket, he tossed it up to Lindsey who caught it and tucked it under his head. It wasn't his pillow, he realized as he leaned back against it, no longer feeling the urge to fain sleep. It was too flat and smelled like his cellmate. The lower bunk squeaked as Scofield got comfortable.

Not a moment too soon. One of those will o' the wisps beamed into the cell, right into Lindsey's eyes. "Show some skin, Scofield," came the order from the CO holding it. There was a pause. Had Michael not gotten the toilet all the way back in place? He wanted to roll over again and check, but that would only draw the guard's attention to it. No, he just had to lay here and hope the man didn't hear how loudly his heart was beating in his chest.

Once upon a time, Lindsey would have described himself as a man who liked action. He was an adrenaline junkie—he'd admit it. The cutthroat competition at Wolfram & Hart had been just his stride. Unfortunately, the blood of innocent bystanders had started to get to him. Here, though, there weren't any kids at risk—just him and a handful of prisoners. Then why was he so scared about getting caught?

Because, he realized, if he did, there was no second chance miracle for him. The Oracle had told him as much.

The guard banged his flashlight between the cell's bars. "Hey, Scofield!" Still no response from Lindsey's cellmate. The guard started rattling his keys. If he came into the cell, odds were good that he would notice the toilet or some other little detail out of place—like the fact that Michael was in bed with his shoes still on.

"Trying to sleep, boss." His cellie's voice was appropriately groggy. Lindsey felt relief wash through his abdomen. He heard the bed creak as Michael rolled back over, and then the CO moved on to the next cell. As soon as the guard was out of earshot, the dull thumps of Michael's shoes hitting the floor reached the ears of the former lawyer. "I can't do anything more until I start the riot. I just don't have enough time."

"Scofield, we're in prison—all we've got is time."

"My brother doesn't."

"I still say this is a bad idea."

"Worse than the idea of losing whoever it is you've got waiting for you on the outside?"

Lindsey snorted softly and kept his eyes on the ceiling. He could practically feel Scofield's gaze boring into his back from the bunk below. The man was trying to play him. He didn't expect anything less—Michael had a lot riding on Lindsey's continued cooperation—but it irked him nevertheless. _Would I do anything different if I were in his position?_ he asked himself. His brain immediately responded with an answer, but not one he wanted: _I would have never put myself in his position_. "I don't have anyone waiting on the outside. The world thinks I'm dead, remember?"

"There's got to be someone who'd be happy to see you alive."

"No, there's not."

Scofield was silent for a couple of minutes, and Lindsey wondered if maybe he'd drifted off to sleep. Then came a very soft, "I'm sorry."

He opened his mouth to answer, but the words didn't seem to want to come out. He was laying on his notepad—the red binding at the top that held the yellow pages together was digging into his hip. Who knew where the pen had gotten to. Reaching under him, he pulled out the pad and tossed it to the floor. It hit the concrete spine-first, producing a sharp crack that sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet cell block.

Idly, he fingered the cross around his wrist. He hadn't seen hide nor hair of Cass since her visit disguised as Sucre's sister. She probably had better things to do than keep an eye on his ass. Not to mention, it had to be hard for her to find ways to communicate with him that didn't leave them both exposed to whatever demonic forces she had hinted were looking for him. If they found him, in the place, there was no where to run. Just one more reason to break out.

"Hey, Scofield."

"Yeah?"

"When are you going to trash the AC unit?"

"Tomorrow." There was a pause. "Changed your mind about the plan?"

"I still think it's the dumbest thing you've come up with yet, but I'll play along. Just show me where to dig."

---

The Oracle, in Dr. Tancredi's body again, wiped her wrist across her forehead to try and get rid of some of the sweat that was pouring down out of her hair. She'd made the switch to Sara Tancredi only to find that the Fox River's doctor was running over forty minutes late. Then, thanks to her lack of intimate knowledge about places like Chicago and Joliet, Illinois, she'd gotten lost on her drive to the prison, putting her well over two hours late. Luckily, Katie, the nurse who seemed to be the doctor's close friend, bought the story about a flat tire. Hell, Cass would go out to the parking lot on her lunch break and slash a tire if it would keep up the charade.

The prisoners were already outside, milling around in the yard on the other side of the chain link and barbed wire fence from her. Hitching the small duffel that Sara used instead of a briefcase farther up her shoulder, the Oracle scanned the crowds of men for a familiar face. No sign of Lindsey, but Michael Scofield was walking along the fence, hands stuffed into the pockets of his prison blues. The day's already sweltering heat made his gray t-shirt stick to his back and gave him a nice sweat collar in the front.

"Hottest April on record," she called out to him as she stepped up to the fence. Honestly, she didn't know if that were true or not, but it sounded good.

The sound of her voice made him pause. "Global warming," he called over his shoulder as he turned to join her at the fence.

"Probably—you got a minute?"

He gave her a cocky half-smile and leaned his arm up against the chain links. "About five years' worth."

Cass allowed herself to give him a little laugh. Damn if he wasn't arrogant. Quick on the uptake too, with plenty of confidence. In some strange way, he reminded her of Lindsey. Or, at least, the Lindsey McDonald that her files described. The Lindsey she knew personally was a little darker, a little more tortured. Then again, Scofield just might be hiding his darker side.

Whatever the case, it didn't matter so long as he didn't cause problems for Lindsey's run of the Gauntlet.

"I'm looking for Sucre, have you seen him around?"

Scofield studied her for a moment. "But he's not really Sucre, is he?" He shifted his weight slightly, leaning closer to her, the mesh of the fencing digging into his forearm. "And you're not really Dr. Tancredi."

Her stomach clenched, but she pasted on a sly smile and turned it up at him. "What's my tell?"

"What makes you think you have one?"

"People normally don't just assume that their friends have been body-snatched, so what's it about the doctor that I'm not getting right?"

"You're asking after Sucre when, as far as I know, he's never even been in the infirmary," Michael whispered. "Do you want me to go get him for you?"

Cass shook her head. "Too suspicious. I probably shouldn't even be lingering here like this." She glanced over at a nearby guard, who stood cradling a rather large gun in his arms and looking extremely bored. "How goes the plan?"

"It goes. Going to shut the AC off tonight, try to get GenPop locked down so we have time to dig."

She just kept shaking her head. "Anything you need me to do?"

"Lindsey told me you could provide evidence that could clear my brother—get that and let me handle the rest." His blue-green eyes were like sea ice—cold and unflinching. Gone was the flirty act. That must have been just for the doctor. Now, Michael Scofield was all business.

"I've got people working on it," she assured him. The duffel was starting to slip down her shoulder again, and she pulled it back into place. "Tell me, Scofield, why anyone would pick your brother to frame? Out of all the two-bit criminals in the country, why him?"

Michael shrugged, a barely perceptible gesture. "I guess we'll find that out when we find out who framed him."

---

Fox River Penitentiary was a labyrinth of mythical proportions. Behind the cold concrete face of the buildings, a maze of service corridors, sewer lines, air vents, and passageways twisted throughout the prison. Michael Scofield didn't claim to know them all—it would take a lifetime for a man to memorize a place like this—but luckily he didn't have to. Everything he really needed to know was hidden in the tattoos that decorated fifty percent of his body. Not just the blue prints, but every little detail of his meticulously crafted plan. Unfortunately, the plan didn't cover every contingency. There was no way on earth it could. Take tonight for example: turning off the AC had never been in the plan. But Scofield was a structural engineer.

Once he got into service corridor that ran behind the cell block, he was able to follow the pipes up into the roof of the prison where the air conditioning units frantically tried to cool the building despite the heat wave outside. Just pull a couple of wires in an inconvenient-to-get-to place and the whole system shut down, leaving Fox River eerily silent.

Taking a moment to rest, his legs wrapped around a large pipe in the ceiling, Michael wiped sweat out of his eyes and wondered just what he'd gotten himself into.

---

A/N: I know, I know. I just put a note up on my profile saying not to expect any updates from me, and here I am updating. Blame the fact that I've got a short attention span… Thanks to Imzadi, --J, and Katie for your review-goodness. If anyone wants to see pictures of the main players in this fic, go into my profile and click the link listed as my home page. It will take you to a page with some quote posters I made.


	14. Riots, Drills, & the Devil 2

Disclaimer: I don't own _Prison Break_, _Buffy: the Vampire Slayer_, or _Angel_. Nor do I profit from writing this. Please don't sue me. Most of the action and some of the lines are taken directly from _Prison Break_ episode #6: "Riots, Drills, and the Devil (pt. 1)".

**Sucre: "You wanna rile up the meat in concrete, turn up the heat."**

---

The inmates of Fox River were discovering a new love for concrete. It was marginally cooler than the air in the prison thanks to the blown AC. Everybody had something to fan themselves with. As Lindsey looked out across the cell block, he could see cons on their bellies on the cell floors, playing cards with the guys in the adjoining cell by sticking their arms through the bars. Personally, he had a _Sports Illustrated_ that had somehow found its way into his cell and was alternating between flipping through it and using it as a fan. His back was pressed up against the cinder block wall, but that was fast loosing its cool as his body heat sucked it right out.

Scofield, however, didn't seem to be feeling the effects of his late night work. He sat at their desk, a piece of tissue paper taped over his arm, tracing a part of his tattoo.

"You were supposed to turn the AC off, not turn on the furnace," Lindsey griped.

Michael ignored him.

Across the cell block, he could see Abruzzi shifting restlessly in his cell. The middle-aged mobster did not look happy with his current situation. Lindsey wondered if Scofield had bothered to tell Abruzzi that the lack of AC was all part of the plan. The other prisoners weren't looking any happier. Even Geary, the guard, looked miserable in his navy uniform.

The sound of the buzzer to let them out was a relief. Maybe there was air flow out on the walkway that wasn't getting into this cell. Lindsey knew it was a pipe dream even as he stepped out onto the line that ran outside the cells, Michael coming out to stand next to him.

Down on the floor below, an inmate stepped out of line. It only took Lindsey a second to identify him as T-bag. Theodore Bagwell, a pedophile rapist and murderer from Alabama. Scuttlebutt in the yard claimed that the prosecutor had asked he be moved to an out-of-state prison to keep him from linking back up with his white supremacist buddies, the Alliance for Purity. Unfortunately, transferring Bagwell to Illinois only served to bring the Alliance north. He was a small, wiry little man with a cock's comb of dusty brown hair and a fondness for pretty men. He was also as tough as old boot leather. Lindsey didn't think he'd met a bigger monster inside the prison…except maybe Abruzzi.

"Why don't you transfer us all someplace cooler?" the supremacist demanded. "Like Africa." He slouched in the middle of the cell block, arms wide and posture defiant as hechallenged Geary. Most of the inmates chimed in their support for T-bag's request.

"Get your ass back on the line, convict," Geary said tersely. The man was sweating like a pig and probably had zero patience at this point, thanks to the soaring temperatures.

T-bag just smirked as some of his gang came sauntering out to back him up. Even a few of the black prisoners started drifting off the line and menacingly towards Geary. Lindsey leaned over the rail, watching. The CO with his little plastic cup of water was vastly out-numbered, but he wasn't going to drop the bullshit bravado act. At this point, it was all he had going for him.

"We'll move when the temperature situation is rectified." Amazing how some of the most uneducated people threw around the biggest words thinking it made them sound intelligent, when all it really did was highlight their street accents. Lindsey'd know men like T-bag, back in the day when his family wandered up and down California with the rest of the migrant workers, picking crops and living hand-to-mouth. Here in Fox River, he'd made himself king frog of the convict pond. Only Abruzzi was more powerful, but the mob boss wasn't interested in playing prisoner games. He had interests outside the walls that demanded most of his attention. The gang of African Americans might be able to stand up to T-bag and the Alliance, but they didn't have such a clear, charismatic leader. Here Bagwell was, trying to stir up trouble, and it was working.

Scofield shifted beside him as another CO came out of the guard room to back Geary up.

"Don't be a baby, T-bag. It ain't that hot," the stocky guard was telling the white supremacist. Lindsey almost groaned at the man's stupidity.

"Not that hot?" Bagwell squawked. He took a couple of steps forward and pointed to a nearby black prisoner. "When this guy woke up this morning, he was white!"

The disgruntled shouting increased all around them. "Clever," Lindsey muttered out of the side of his mouth to Scofield, "He's not playing the race card like you said he did last time. This time it's going to be prisoners against the COs."

"Just so long as it gets us locked down," Scofield murmured back.

"You wanna cool off?" Geary demanded, and then he chucked the contents of his cup into T-bag's face. This time Lindsey did groan. The man was an utter moron to be that fucking disrespectful to a con who currently had the entire support of A-wing when it was just him and one other guard surrounded by dozens of prisoners. The other guard wasn't impressing the former lawyer much either. He didn't look familiar and the tentative way he was telling the cons to step back made Lindsey suspect he was new.

T-bag was bristling. When he spoke, his voice was no longer that of a showman, trying to gather attention to himself, but of a very angry man. "We'll step back when we get some wind blowing in here."

"All right!" Geary bellowed, his face somehow flushing even more. "That's it! Lock down! Everyone back in your cells!"

Lindsey tried not to smile.


	15. Riots, Drills, & the Devil 3

Disclaimer: I don't own _Prison Break_, _Buffy: the Vampire Slayer_, or _Angel_. Nor do I profit from writing this. Please don't sue me. Most of the action and some of the lines are taken directly from _Prison Break_ episode #6: "Riots, Drills, and the Devil (pt. 1)".

A/N: Thanks to Imzadi for the review.

Claire H., yes, the phrase is normally seen as 'deus ex machina', which translates from the Latin as 'god from the machine'. Since here it is referring to the Oracle, who's female, I changed the spelling to 'dea ex machina' or the 'goddess from the machine'.

-----

T-bag had given them their riot. It was good to know that he could be counted on to do something even if he had to be manipulated into it, Michael thought as he turned and headed right back into the cell. Grabbing the sheet from Sucre's bunk, he turned to the man impersonating his cellmate. "You're coming with me."

"What?" Behind Lindsey, the cell door slid shut with a resounding clang. From beyond it came the sounds of the other prisoners yelling.

"I need you down there—it's a two man job." Judging from the noise, their fellow inmates weren't going to settle down anytime soon, but there was no way for Michael to tell how long it would be before the lockdown was lifted. It might be before chow tonight, or it might be days. It all depended on human factors that he knew deep down that he could never calculate properly. That was the problem with this plan: it relied too much on illogical humans. Would they react this way or that way? He could only guess and pray that luck would be on his side.

Getting assigned a cellmate who was desperate enough to get out that he'd help with the escape had been sheer luck. And then, when the switch (which Michael still didn't understand and wasn't quite sure he completely believed) between Sucre and this Lindsey person had happened, it had again been luck that Lindsey seemed to want to help him. He could have just as easily blown the whistle as soon as he saw the hole behind the toilet.

He yanked the sheet free of the thin mattress. "Let's hang a sheet."

"I thought you only did that when you and your cellie wanted to get…uh, friendly."

"Do you want to protect your prison rep, or do you want to get out of here?" He tossed the wadded up sheet to Lindsey and turned away. Retrieving his makeshift wrench from its hiding place and unscrewing the toilet from the wall was routine by now. The brightness of the light changed as it filtered through the 100-thread count sheet that Lindsey had just hung.

The air that behind the toilet, trapped in the narrow maintenance passage, was stifling and smelled mustier than normal. Michael crawled through first, then moved aside as Lindsey fit Sucre's broader shoulders through the narrow opening the wall.

"Aren't you worried about some repairman finding your little dog door?" Lindsey asked as Michael pulled the toilet back into place.

It settled against the cinderblocks with a dull clang. "Not really—most of this is access to the sewer and water lines from each cell to the mains. Unless there's a major plumbing problem, nobody's going to bother coming back here." He pointed up. "The wiring, heat, and AC run through the ceilings of the cells. The plumbing was all upgraded during the renovations that my firm oversaw, so there shouldn't be any problems until you and I are long gone."

"Sounds like you thought of everything," Lindsey muttered.

Michael led them down the narrow walkway. "Everything that I could ahead of time. There are holes in my plan—places where I have to play it by ear."

"That bothers you."

He nodded. A noise made him pause. Banging somewhere nearby—insistent but too irregular to be mechanical.

Lindsey stopped as well, cocking his head to the side as he listened. "T-bag wasn't in his cell when the doors shut. There were about twenty inmates still loose in the cell block."

Better twenty than all three hundred housed in A-wing. The COs would be able to gain control of twenty after they wore themselves out in the heat. Three hundred prisoners loose, though, was pure hell. Michael swallowed as he remembered the riot that had broken out not long after he arrived at Fox River. Someone had tossed him over the second floor rail, and he'd hit the concrete hard. Tear gas and toilet paper had filled the air as people rushed left in right, making it impossible to tell who had a shank and who didn't. Another inmate, Maytag, had died in Michael's arms after someone carelessly stabbed him in the heart on the stairs. All Michael had wanted to do was get a bolt Maytag had taken, that he needed to fashion his wrench… "Come on," he barked and pushed forward down the passage.


	16. Riots, Drills, & the Devil 4

Disclaimer: I don't own _Prison Break_, _Buffy: the Vampire Slayer_, or _Angel_. Nor do I profit from writing this. Please don't sue me. Most of the action and some of the lines are taken directly from _Prison Break_ episode #6: "Riots, Drills, and the Devil (pt. 1)".

A/N: **I posted chapters 18 & 19 concurrently, so if the last chapter you read wasn't from Michael's POV, you missed chapter 18**.

-----

Scofield stood in front of a blank concrete wall, deep within the bowels of the prison. It looked like every other wall in the godforsaken place, Lindsey mused as sweat poured down his face and back. His white undershirt was already soaked clear through.

"Somewhere on the other side of this wall is the main drainage pipe to the prison's old sewer system. If we can get through this wall, we can get into the pipe. If we can get into the pipe, we can get to the infirmary. And if we can get to the infirmary, then we can get out of here."

He looked so confident, standing with his hands in his pockets as he explained the next step in the plan of escape, that Lindsey couldn't help but smile. Maybe Scofield wasn't off his rocker after all.

-----

Cass had adopted her 'Sucre's Sister' disguise but had barely made it through security before the guards started telling her she had to leave.

"There's a minor disturbance in A-wing, ma'am," the guard said as he took her arm and steered her back towards the door. "It's for your safety."

"My brother's in A-wing!" she protested, yanking her elbow out of his hand. "What's going on?"

"He's fine," the guard said even though they both knew that he had no way of knowing. "Come back tomorrow, and you'll probably be allowed to see him."

The Oracle bit back an oath of frustration as she allowed herself to be herded back out into the parking lot. As soon as she reached the cars, she threw her wicker purse with its bamboo handles on to the pavement. Cosmetics she'd never even looked at, much less used, bounced out and rolled under a nearby pickup truck with a 'Git 'er Done' bumper sticker. She'd left a very delicate situation in LA to come out here and deal with this, and she couldn't even get in the fucking building. Not to mention, she hadn't spoken to either Lorne or Anya since she'd sent them through the portal to Houston. If Gabriel knew what was going on, he'd have all her cases pulled and bounce her right back to the ranks. There was no way she was going back to being a foot soldier, even if she hadn't bothered to return her sword.

She wasn't the only one being given the boot, she realized as she watched a man and a woman—both dressed in drab professional clothing similar to what Anya and Lorne were wearing as part of their lawyer disguises—come out of the building. The man headed straight to the car, but the woman stopped and looked across the parking lot at Cass.

For a moment, their eyes met, and a tingle shot down the Oracle's spine. _I'll see her again_. She didn't know how she knew…she just did.

The man called out to the woman, and she turned away. Connection broken, Cass wondered if she had really felt anything after all as she watched the two drive away in separate cars.

Shaking herself, she looked down at the purse on the pavement. "So, they think they can keep me out of the prison, huh? Well, looks like I'll just have to get another body."

-----

Either some maintenance man had left a very large horde of tools and equipment conveniently next to their target wall, or Scofield had been scurrying around the prison after hours snitching stuff. Lindsey watched as his cellmate hung a work lamp from a carefully adjust stand and draped what looked like an aluminum foil air filter with tissue paper taped to it over the light bulb. "That's one big pile of concrete. How do you know where the pipe is?" he asked the supposed structural engineer turned bank robber.

"We've got someone to show us where it is," Scofield answered cryptically as he lowered the tissue paper into place and clicked on the light.

An image was cast across Lindsey's chest and the wall behind him, and he looked down to see a set of angry looking eyes projected over his heart. Stepping clear, he turned to see a snarling image of a devil with pointy teeth and a curling beard covering the area Scofield had been pointing to earlier when he discussed drilling into the pipe. It looked suspiciously like part of the other man's tattoo, and Lindsey suddenly knew what Michael had been doing with the tissue paper while the rest of the inmates were stewing in their own juices. He'd been tracing part of the tattoo. Clever kid.

-----

The doctor was in the house, and the Oracle was in the doctor. Unfortunately, wherever Sara Tancredi currently was, it wasn't the recognizable infirmary, though there were plenty of medical supplies as well as sick and injured prisoners scattered about.

Cass opened the door that led from the room with the prisoners to what appeared to be a private office, complete with reinforced glass windows through which the patients could be observed. Carefully, she closed the door behind her and heard the lock click automatically into place.

Moving out of sight of the windows, she leaned up against a counter and closed her eyes, forcing herself to concentrate despite the heat. As a Higher Power, she could sense her charges' presence if they were within a few miles from her location as well as any obviously mystical beings, like vampires, witches, etc. unless they were taking special measures to cloak themselves. It took concentration and gave her one hell of a migraine (and her head was already throbbing from earlier), but she need to find Lindsey.

Fox River's aura was almost slimy with pain and evil, no surprise there. She'd been in Hell dimensions that were worse. However, this place seemed remarkably magic-free. Pushing her way through the astral equivalent of a peat bog, she tried to focus on particularly strong energy signatures. The first one she lighted on was a…witch's familiar? That made no sense, but she pressed on, praying that she wasn't somehow screwing this up. This was Human Resources mojo, and as such, she was fairly new at using it.

The next thing that popped up on her mystical radar made her swear. "Shit," she hissed through her teeth. There was a demon in the building. She didn't remember the name of the particular demon species, but they had a ring of small horns around the top of their head that made them look like a cross between a humanoid and a dinosaur. They were also infamous as muscles-for-hire. "What's he doing here?" He seemed to be moving towards another—much dimmer—presence. Some sort of latent talent—she couldn't tell what. "And who is he hunting?"

Lindsey was her first priority. She couldn't afford to get distracted, not any more than she already was. Stretching out her senses even further, she finally found him, far removed from everyone else, another latent working beside him. "That must be Scofield," Cass murmured as she opened her eyes and let the intangible energy signatures slip out of her consciousness.

Time to go play doctor.

One of her gloves didn't seem to be on right, and she had her head down, fussing with it as she opened the door and stepped back into the sick bay. Big mistake.

The guard—the only other prison employee in sight—was laid out on the floor. Behind her, she sensed movement and spun, coming face-to-face with black man almost a foot taller than her borrowed body. "What's up, doc?" he sneered, his eyes roaming predatorily down to her chest.

'Shit' did not even begin to cover it.


	17. Riots, Drills, & the Devil 5

Disclaimer: I don't own _Prison Break_, _Buffy: the Vampire Slayer_, or _Angel_. Nor do I profit from writing this. Please don't sue me. Most of the action and some of the lines are taken directly from _Prison Break_ episode #6: "Riots, Drills, and the Devil (pt. 1)".

A/N: Imzadi, as usual, you rock my world with your reviews.

-----

The part of Cass's brain that had been drilled in martial combat for centuries kicked in, and she slammed her foot into the big man's crotch. He grunted and doubled over, giving her the chance to push past him and back into the office.

Mind a whirl, she looked around for something to block the door. The kick to the groin would only stall him for a few minutes, and then he'd be back after her again and _pissed_. Putting her shoulder to the desk, she shoved it in front of the door even as the inmate hit the glass.

"Come on, doc!" he bellowed, pressing his face against the reinforced glass in the door. His hand on the glass made it shake in its frame, and suddenly the Oracle didn't have much faith in the crisscrossing wires between the panes.

The other prisoners were up off their beds, circling around the other windows in the office. One against five. One of the inmates had his arm in a sling and another—a scrawny, annoying looking white man—was favoring one leg. Maybe…maybe if she were in her own body (or at least a familiar one) with her powers, maybe then she could take them. But if Dr. Tancredi worked out, it was to keep her thighs from getting too big, not to build up fighting muscle. There was no way out of the office except the way she came in.

Oh, lord, she'd trapped herself in a fucking fishbowl!

-----

Lindsey looked at the projection of the devil's head on the wall. "Now, I know the man," he said, gesturing to the devil, "Has some crazy powers. I dabbled with a few of them, but how is he supposed to get us through that wall? Unless he comes with a sledgehammer? It's going to take us months to break through this with your precious eggbeater."

Scofield just wiped the sweat off his forehead and smirked. The man's know-it-all smile was starting to get on the former lawyer's nerves. "We don't need a sledgehammer."

And he tossed him the eggbeater. Lindsey just raised his eyebrow.

-----

The Oracle's eyes flashed from one part of the cramped office to the other, evaluating everything as a potential weapon and then discarding it. The hypodermic needles might be good as a last resort, and the cabinet full of drugs _looked_ promising, but she didn't know what any of them did. The last thing she needed was to pump one of these crazed…animals full of stimulant on accident.

Suddenly, the incessant, frantic pounding on the glass stopped, and she looked up, almost scared at what could have drawn the prisoners away.

It was the prison guard. She'd forgotten all about him. "Shit," she whispered even as she heard a voice over his shoulder radio asking if everything was all right in sick bay.

One of the inmates had the CO's face pressed up against a pipe so tightly she was afraid his skull would crack under the pressure. "All clear in sick bay," he managed to growl into the radio, but the look in his eyes spoke volumes about what this guard thought about being used by inmates. He wasn't scared, he was angry, and angry people did very stupid things in situations like this.

_I need to get out of here, and I have to take him with me,_ Cass thought.

-----

The sounds of the riot echoed down to Lindsey's ears. Michael had noticed as well, judging by the way he was looking at the ceiling rather than at what he was doing.

"Focus, Scofield," Lindsey barked, shaking the theoretically useful eggbeater in his cellmate's direction. "We are not going to get your brother out if you don't do your hoodoo on this concrete wall."

'Brother' turned out to be the magic word that dragged the man's attention back onto the here and now. "I…" he started to explain but trailed off.

"You never meant for it to go this far," Lindsey finished for him. "You didn't want people to get hurt, but you needed time and the best way to get it was a lock-down and the best way to get a lock-down was to rile the prisoners up."

"And now people could be dying up there," Michael added, his gaze wandering back to the ceiling.

"Because of you." It was harsh, but it was the truth. They didn't have time to play nice at the moment. For the first time, Lindsey started to wonder if maybe Scofield was in over his head. Prison was a whole other world from the cushy world of structural engineering that the man had apparently inhabited before getting wrapped up in all of this. "Michael, I'm not in this body because I was a nice man when I was alive. I was so untrustworthy that when the good guys decided lay the smack down on the bad and I volunteered to help, they decided I could help all I want but then I needed to die afterward."

"They betrayed you."

"At least I was facing my shooter when he pulled the trigger," Lindsey muttered sourly. "And I'd betrayed them plenty on other occasions, so I suppose it was only fair."

Scofield didn't say anything, just looked at him with unreadable eyes.

"Look, I worked for the law firm that fabricated the evidence used to put your brother away. Some very bad men want your brother dead, and if they went to all this trouble to frame him, it means there's something larger at stake."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I doubt Burrows was chosen at random. Either something tied him to Terrance Steadman or Wolfram & Hart wanted him dead for another reason." He'd been turning this over in his head for days now but still couldn't find any answers. He was pretty sure he'd never heard the name Lincoln Burrows not in connection with Steadman's murder back when he was at Wolfram & Hart, but that didn't mean much. It could have been handled at another branch of the law firm or was of high enough importance that he didn't have the clearance to see it.

"My brother was fired from one of Steadman's companies a few weeks before the murder," Scofield supplied.

"Something tells me it's more than that. Now, explain to me how we're getting through this wall."

"Ever hear of tensile strength, Hook's Law of Elasticity? If we drill holes in strategic locations, we compromise the load-carrying capacity of the wall."

It was loony enough that it made sense. "Like pressure points in martial combat," Lindsey murmured as he looked up at the projected devil with new respect.

Michael took the striped down eggbeater from him. "Sort of—we go in through the tip of each horn, the eyes, the end of the nose, the bottom of the fangs, and the end of the braids. Makes a kind of 'X'. Let's get to it."


	18. Riots, Drills, & the Devil 6

Disclaimer: I don't own _Prison Break_, _Buffy: the Vampire Slayer_, or _Angel_. Nor do I profit from writing this. Please don't sue me. Most of the action and some of the lines are taken directly from _Prison Break_ episode #6: "Riots, Drills, and the Devil (pt. 1)". The magazine Lincoln sort of mentions is _National Geographic_, November 2004.

-----

They'd had to switch off after Scofield finished drilling the first hole. Punching through concrete with an eggbeater was exhausting work—especially in this Godforsaken heat. Lindsey was tempted to ask his cellmate to restore the AC, but he had a feeling that whatever Michael had done to the unit was a bit more permanent than just flicking the on / off switch. "So…what if we do all this work, and the pipe we want is ten feet that way?" he asked.

"It won't be."

"You got x-ray vision?"

"I calculated the drill point coordinates, hid them in my tattoo, and then projected them back onto the wall. Everything's been worked out so the image hits the right spot. It's just math."

"What if your math is wrong?"

"You'll drill into one of a dozen gas lines behind the wall and in the explosion be burned alive."

"Oh, great—now you tell me."

From somewhere overhead came a crash that made both their heads shoot up. "That was the toilet," Michael murmured.

"Can this get any worse?"

-----

Apparently, an inmate wielding a plastic desk chair was enough to fracture reinforced glass if the inmate was large enough. Another piece of useless trivia that Cass wished she'd never been in a situation to find out. Her fishbowl was starting to crack.

Time for drastic measures. Taking the stapler off the desk, she used it to smash the glass-front doors on the medicine cabinet. She was still going to stick to her 'Drugs Bad' plan from earlier, but the glass itself might make a good weapon. Striping off her white lab coat, she balled it up and used it to pick up the largest of the glass shards. The prisoners weren't the only ones who could make shanks.

The Oracle crouched down beside the exam table, holding the piece of glass at the ready in front of her. If these inmates wanted to play, then they were going to have to come to her.

-----

Michael didn't know what to expect as he squirmed through the hole that led from the service corridor to his cell. A beaten and bloody CO sitting on his bunk wasn't high on the list of possibilities, but that's what he found. The guard was a fairly young man with a round baby face. Scofield had never seen him before, which suggested this was either his first day or he was assigned to some other portion of the prison. Maybe both, he amended as he watched the man look nervously from him to the other men standing in the cell—Abruzzi and T-bag.

"Yeah, we…we have a problem," Abruzzi informed him as if Michael didn't already know.

"Oh, yeah, that's right—Bob here's seen the hole," T-bag chimed in. "He's gotta go away."

If the CO, Bob, wasn't assigned to Gen Pop, than A-wing wasn't as securely locked down as it should be. Which meant there could be prisoners swarming all over the inside of Fox River. Shit. And T-bag was right, Bob knowing about the hole was the worst possible scenario. He seemed like a genuinely good guy—he just had that kind of face—and he'd feel obligated to tell the warden. Sure, Abruzzi could probably use his Mob connections to put pressure on Bob to stay silent, but Michael didn't want something like that on his conscience. What if the guard had a wife? Kids?

Michael turned away from the guard, the pervert, and the Mob boss and rested his head against the rough cinder block wall.

But what if threatening the CO's family meant the difference between Lincoln living or dying? He come this far and done this much to save his brother. He couldn't just stop now. But maybe he could stall until more options presented themselves. "No one's going anywhere," he said calmly, turning back around to face T-bag.

"He's seen the hole!" Bagwell repeated as he stepped up to get in Michael's face.

Michael kept his face expressionless. He'd gotten very good at that since landing himself in prison.

Abruzzi stepped up as well, leering menacingly at T-bag. "And so have you."

"This can't be good."

Everyone paused to look down at the Sucre-who-wasn't-Sucre as the man wormed his way out of the hole. The look he gave Michael said that he understood the intricacies of the situation, but he was going to follow Michael's lead.

He looked from Sucre to Bob the Guard. "I have a daughter…please," the man begged in a quiet voice that made Michael's gut clench. What was he doing here? This was all wrong. _Lincoln_, he reminded himself. He had to stay focused; he had to keep thinking of Lincoln and the electric chair.

"We gotta kill him," T-bag pressed.

So lockdown had been a bad idea. But it wasn't going to last forever. The guards and local police were probably already gathered outside, working on a plan of attack. Standard operating procedure in a case like this said the first thing the warden was going to do was kill the AC to make the prisoners uncomfortable. Well, Michael had already taken care of that for him. Then, they'd shut off the water and the sewage. The toilets in all the cells would begin to backup, and the stench combined with the heat was sure to drive the prisoners to some kind of compromise. _Or whip them into a murderous frenzy_, he added mentally.

"The cops are right outside," he barked at T-bag.

The murderer cocked his head.

"And they'll stay outside," Michael continued. He glanced over at Abruzzi, hoping he was seeming reasonable to the Mob boss. "As long as we're keeping him alive."

"But he's a guard…he's gonna squeal!" T-bag protested. Reasonable rarely worked on the man, Michael was discovering. His perverse appetites seemed to drive him right past logic…unless logic suited his purposes.

"What the hell does this have to do with you anyway?" Abruzzi demanded. Michael watched as he leaned in close to T-bag, until their noses were only centimeters apart. A drop of sweat ran down the side of Abruzzi's face and fell onto T-bag's. "This is not any of your concern." His voice was low, threatening. The same voice he'd used when he'd ordered a set of garden sheers taken to two of Michael's toes. Suddenly, Scofield was very aware of the dull ache in his foot and the heavy bandage stuffed into his boot.

T-bag, though, didn't seem to have the brains to realize just how much trouble he was in. Either that, or he figured he had the upper hand as he shrugged out from under Abruzzi and turned to Michael with a sneer. "So, Bob here knows about _our _secret. He knows about _our_ escape."

So, the pervert wanted in on the plan. Unacceptable. The man had raped and murdered multiple teenagers across the state of Alabama. He'd even been on _America's Most Wanted_. If it came down to killing T-bag or helping him escape, Michael just might choose to kill him.

Even as he thought that, he knew it wasn't true. He'd come to Fox River to save a man's life…but not at the expense of another, not even a scumbag like T-bag.

Over T-bag's shoulder, Michael could see Abruzzi begin to chuckle softly. _He_ would have no qualms about killing someone, and he might just take matters into his own hands if he thought Michael was being too weak.

"So it's _all_ of our concern now, isn't it?" T-bag continued, still sneering.

-----

Lincoln Burrows woke up face-down on concrete. Unfortunately, this wasn't the first time he'd ended up in this position. He'd done a lot of drugs before being sent to Fox River for a murder he hadn't committed. Drugs and concrete always seemed to go hand-in-hand.

He was clean now—had been since they'd handed down his death sentence. It was hard enough to get the drugs here in prison—expensive too—but it got even harder when you were on Death Row. Plus, he'd rather spend his money on magazines to keep him occupied while he was shut up in his cell with nothing to do. The money that had once gone up his nose now went to sending his kid a birthday card and educating himself about evolution, sloth bears, and the Maya underworld.

That still didn't explain the concrete or the pain in his head or…the tiny tongue licking his face. He opened his eyes to find himself looking into the big brown eyes of a small brown and black cat. She licked his nose once more for good measure and then sat back, watching him.

"Hey, Marilyn," he mumbled as he rolled over onto his back, trying to assess the damage the other cons had done. One of the COs, Bob, had been taking him back to his cell when they'd been jumped by T-bag and some of his boys. Now, Bob was a good guy, and Linc had no love for T-bag since the jackass had it in for his brother. So, defend Bob—who never put the cuffs on tighter than he had to and who kept him up-to-date on baseball—and beat the shit out of T-bag in the process? It hadn't really been a choice.

Unfortunately, jackals like Bagwell traveled in packs. Six against one wasn't good odds, even if his prison nickname was "the Sink". The pain in his head was worse than his worst hangover, he decided. He raised a hand to his forehead and felt the lump from where he'd head-butted someone to get the fight started. He'd have a funny looking bruise for a couple of days, but the other guy would be lucky to have a small skull fracture. Michael always said he had a hard head.

Marilyn meowed and flicked her tail impatiently. Easing himself up into a sitting position, he reached over and scratched the little cat under her chin. "What're you doing running around by yourself? Where's Westmoreland?" Marilyn was the last remainder of an old prison program to try and pacify inmates by giving them pets. Her owner, Westmoreland, was the Old Head of Gen Pop. He'd been at Fox River since the late '70s and wasn't going anywhere.

Marilyn bumped her head against Lincoln's palm and then looked pointedly down the hall.

With a grunt, Linc struggled to his feet, scooping the little cat up in one hand. "You're right. We need to get out of here—I've got to find Michael before he gets himself shanked." Which way though? He couldn't afford to get waylaid en route to A-wing.

"You looking for Scofield?"

Linc whirled (and immediately wished he hadn't as the movement made his head throb impossibly hard) to find one of the newer prisoners—big guy with the sort of muscles usually seen on pro weight lifters. "Yeah, Turk."

The big man nodded. "Come on." And then headed down a nearby stairwell.

As far as Lincoln knew, that wasn't a way into A-wing, but his brother had been crawling all over the prison working on his crazy plans for an escape. Trust Michael to be down in the bowels of Fox River during a riot when he should be staying in the relative safety of his cell. Preferably hiding in the very back and armed with a shank. Tucking Marilyn closer to his chest, Lincoln headed down the stairs after Turk.

-----

"Now, you listen, pervert! You're in as much trouble as he is, you understand?"

Lindsey watched as Abruzzi slammed T-bag against the walkway rail outside his and Michael's cell. Said pervert tried to squirm away, but the Mob boss kept a firm grip on him. John Abruzzi may be getting on in years, but he was still not a man to mess with. And, thankfully, he had taken on the job of intimidating T-bag. Somehow, Lindsey didn't think Cass would have looked too highly on him doing it.

"Go ahead! Go ahead! Stick me! Stick me!" Bagwell hissed as the two grappled. "How many times do you think I can shout out about your little hole before I bleed out? Huh? Every con in here's gonna know 'bout your little escape before one drop of my blood hits the floor. So, you see, friends, either I'm through that hole with you or I'm gonna sing like Johnny Cash."

Michael bristled, and Lindsey moved until he was just inside the door to the cell. If T-bag tried to make a run for it, they could take him down, but probably not before he let the whole world know their little secret…and what a mess that would be. This situation could not possibly get any worse. And what the hell had he been doing in their cell with a CO anyway?

And if Scofield's reaction to the CO was any indication, then the man didn't have the stomach for any of the dozens of ways Lindsey could think of for Abruzzi to handle their current situation. Snapping T-bag's neck and pitching him over the rail was probably the cleanest. It wasn't the nice thing to do, but it might be their only way to keep the con silent. "Go assess the situation," Lindsey murmured to his cellmate.

"What?" Michael looked back at him, a parade of conflicted and unhappy emotions in his eyes.

"Go—John and I will take care of this." When it came down to it, Michael's hands were clean, and Lindsey's weren't. He wasn't going to let a sleazebag like Bagwell ruin a good man like Michael Scofield.


	19. Riots, Drills, & the Devil 7

Disclaimer: I don't own _Prison Break_, _Buffy: the Vampire Slayer_, or _Angel_. Nor do I profit from writing this. Please don't sue me. Most of the action and some of the lines are taken directly from _Prison Break_ episodes #6 & 7: "Riots, Drills, and the Devil (pt. 1 & 2)".

-----

'Go assess the situation' his cellmate had said. Michael wasn't quite sure what there was to assess as he hurried down the stairs to the cellblock floor. Toilet paper rained down around him like confetti at a sick parade.

"Hey, yo, Trekky! Stroke is about to get the doc!"

The shout had come from the guards' room underneath the stairs where the controls for the cellblock were located. The mesh screens had been torn away from the room's windows, and prisoners were crawling in and out of them, even though the door was standing wide open. No damage to the knob or the lock, some part of his brain noticed as he ran in, so someone had gotten their hands on a set of keys.

Michael elbowed aside a prisoner and joined the man who sold him the eggbeater at a bank of security monitors. The one that was getting all the attention showed a grainy image of Sara crouched beside an examining room bed, her coat clutched between her gloved hands as inmates beat at the room's windows. It looked like the sick bay office, if his memory served him correctly.

He had to get her out of there.

He ran back up to his cell, shoving aside the men who got in his way. "Sucre, I need you to finish what we started," he ordered as he pulled aside the sheet and ducked in, not really sure what he'd walk in on. From the way Sucre had been acting when he sent Michael away, he was pretty sure his cellmate and Abruzzi were planning on doing something violent to T-bag.

Currently, though, nothing more violent than a staring match between the murderer and the Mob boss was going on. He squeezed between them and yanked the toilet—which someone had thoughtfully put back in place—away from the wall.

"What's going on?" Sucre demanded. "Where're you going?"

"Sick bay."

That attracted Abruzzi's attention. "There's no way for you to get there—we're all locked down."

"I'm not," he snapped. The thought of Sara being hounded by those…animals was enough reason to be snippy. Like Bob, she was a good person (God, there was even a Gandhi quote under her picture in her college year book) caught up in a mess of his making. He wasn't going to make her suffer for his screw ups. He turned to Sucre. "No one touches the CO."

Sucre nodded solemnly.

Michael was putting a lot of trust in a man he didn't know, but out of all the men in this cell, he had a feeling that Sucre was the only one who would stick his neck out to protect Bob. "No one," he repeated for good measure and then was through the hole in the wall and gone.

-----

"It's faster if we cut through here," Turk called back over his shoulder.

Lincoln couldn't argue with that—he'd been lost ever since they'd gone down the stairs. Marilyn, in his arms, was being a restless little brat, hissing and spitting and trying to escape from his grasp. She'd clawed his arm good, and he was half-tempted to let her go, but he didn't want her running around the prison alone. There were guys in here who'd torture her just for the hell of it.

Turk opened another barred door, and they headed down yet another flight of stairs. What was Michael doing down here?

-----

The fastest way to get to sick bay was to go up to the roof. It'd also give him a chance to assess the situation like Sucre'd asked him to since he'd have a nice view of the prison yard. Scrambling over to the edge of the roof, he looked down at the window that he knew led to the sick bay office. He could see Sara through the bars and the glass. Her wadded up coat was on the sill in front of her as she deliberately tried to force the window open. She was acting a lot calmer than he thought she would be.

"That's not her," he murmured as the realization struck. That wasn't Dr. Sara Tancredi down there—it was the fake-Sucre's friend, the other body-snatcher.

A helicopter buzzed by low overhead, and he flinched instinctively. A pavilion had been set up in the middle of the yard. That would be the HQ for the warden and other authorities. The helicopter that had just gone by was one of two. The white and blue one belonged to the police, probably state troopers, and the green would be the National Guard.

Time to keep moving. He scrambled up the slope of the roof on his hands and feet until he reached the chimney for a wide air vent. The screen stretched across the mouth to keep out rodents and birds practically fell off in his hands. It was mercifully wide enough for him to enter feet-first.

There was a lot of air vent between him and the doctor, and not a whole lot of time.

-----

"Scofield's in here?" Lincoln asked in disbelief. They were in the underbelly of the prison now, surrounded by hissing pipes and dripping walls. He'd be surprised if there was anything but cockroaches down here. "You sure he's in here?" He stumbled on the walkway and banged his injured head against a pipe.

Marilyn took the opportunity to wiggle her way out of his arms and take off into the steam.

"Cat, come back!" he called after her, even though he knew she was gone. She was a pretty smart critter—maybe she had the brains to stay undercover until the riot blew over. "Turk? Turk!" Where'd the big guy gone?

Then something heavy fell on top of him, driving Lincoln to his knees as a garrote slipped around his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the green rubber band that Turk always wore around one wrist. Straining against the other inmate, he slammed him back up against a wall. This was going to be very bad.

Lifting up on his toes, he slammed Turk back again and again, trying to loosen his hold on the garrote even just a little. The other man was definitely stronger—almost inhumanly so—and hadn't already had the crap kicked out of him by T-bag.

Air wasn't getting in, and his head was starting to swim because of it. Time to try a different wall. Same result—none, but he did get the chance to free his right hand. The handcuff he'd been wearing when T-bag had jumped him and Bob was still shackled to that wrist. He'd taken the key from Bob and unlocked the other cuff, so he could use it as a weapon. Worked just as well down here, he figured, as he slammed the hook of metal into Turk's gut.

The big man and his piece of wire fell away, and Lincoln staggered forward, clutching at his neck. His hand came away covered in blood. Breathing would be good right now.

-----

And to think he'd tried to send Scofield away. Now, since Abruzzi had disappeared to God-only-knows-where, Lindsey found himself alone in his cell with one very frightened CO and a pedophile from Alabama who seemed intent on undressing said CO. So far, T-bag had gotten shoes and now belt off the frightened man.

"You're not going to use that," Lindsey growled over his shoulder.

T-bag smacked it lightly against a bedpost. "You makin' up the rules now, huh?"

"It's my house. You got a problem?" Lindsey shot back. Maybe he shouldn't have let Michael and Abruzzi take the lead quite so much. T-bag didn't seem to see him as a voice of authority. He almost wished the pedophile would try something, so he'd have an excuse to kick the man's ass. Lindsey gave the lanky man another look. No, better not try violence if he could help it. T-bag seemed the kind to have a shank or three tucked away for just such emergencies.

"Yeah, I got a problem—we all do." Bagwell cut his eyes to the CO.

Bob swallowed; his blue eyes full of fear and pleading. "No problem…I swear to God. I'm not going to say anything. I didn't see anything."

Lindsey swallowed as he yanked the toilet back away from the hole in the wall.

"Please," the guard pleaded, "Don't leave me." The 'here with him' went unsaid.

Jesus, the man had a daughter. Lindsey didn't know how old, but did that really matter? Even if he was a child-support dodging son of a bitch who lived at home with his mom and occasionally kicked dogs, he didn't deserve to be left at the mercy of T-bag. Bagwell had something sick planned for the CO as soon as Lindsey went into that hole—he could just see it in the other man's eyes. Bob could see it too. "Damn you, Scofield," he muttered.

"What was that?" T-bag inquired.

Lindsey grabbed the guard by the front of his navy shirt and hauled him off the bed. "You, into the hole."

That had Bagwell on his feet in an instant. "Now, see here, what's this?"

"This would be us being behind schedule. This would be Scofield not here to help with the drilling. Since Bob's got nothing better to do, I figure he can lend a hand."

"Now, is it wise to let him see more of our little plan?" T-bag wound one of the CO's shoelaces around his hand.

Lindsey gave him a very deliberate 'are you stupid look?'. "He's already seen enough to bury us for an extra decade if he squeals. Personally, I'd like to breathe free air again before I qualify for an AARP membership, which means I've got a wall of concrete to get through." He continued to manhandle Bob right into the hole as he talked, keeping himself between the CO and the con.

T-bag slinked closer, and Lindsey had the sudden urge to snatch the Bible of the desk next to him and throw it. He wondered if it'd have the same effect on Bagwell that it did on vampires. "I should come too…help you out."

Lindsey jabbed a finger into T-bag's chest to halt his forward progress. "No! No, you need to stay here and watch the rear. I hear you're pretty good at that."

There was a vague flash of annoyance in the man's eyes, but all that came out of his mouth was a teasing, "It has been said."

-----

The air vents were not a part of the prison Michael had incorporated into his final plan. His progress through the metal ducts had to be creating one hell of a ruckus. He'd evaluated them when he was still mulling over how to break his brother out, and the time he spent studying them was the only thing guiding him now. He paused over a mesh grill covering an opening in the duct and glanced down, trying to get his bearings. Get to sick bay, get the woman currently possessing Sara Tancredi away from her would-be assailants, and then find a way to get her out of Fox River. As long as chaos reigned inside the prison, no place would be safe for her.

Left turn at an intersection. The rough edges of the metal were slicing into his arms. _I don't care if I get cut up, just please don't let anything scar_. A scar could distort an image incorporated into his tattoo. Some of the images were just notes, reminders to himself about street names, phone numbers. But there were other pieces, like the devil, that had to stay unblemished. Precise calculations could be lost and the entire escape plan could fail if he injured himself in the wrong place. _Luckily, I didn't tattoo anything on my toes_, he thought wryly.

The duct ended in another mesh screen. He popped it out, carefully setting it next to him in the duct. This was a part of the prison that had been heavily renovated. Fox River's original builders had been heavily influenced by European medieval architecture, and the entire compound looked like a pale stone castle draped in barbed wire. Someone had actually taken the time to install elaborately carved molding along the ceiling in this room, not know that construction crews would come through decades later and lower the ceiling three feet so pipes could be run through.

He reached out and tugged on the nearest pipe—a thin and rusted thing only an inch or two in diameter. It held. He put more weight on it and wasn't greeted by the groan of metal, so he figured it was safe to move across. Locking his ankles together on the top of the pipe, he began to inch himself, hand-over-hand through the ceiling.

-----

Cass was going to have to reevaluate the evolutionary gap between her and the men pounding on the outside of the fish bowl. They'd just discovered fire…in the form of a burning phone book, which they'd shoved through the hole in the door in an effort to smoke her out. On the one hand, she should probably be pleased that her efforts to defend herself had forced them to try more advanced measures—most of the idiots were bleeding from the wrist after trying to stick their hands through the hole—but on the other, if the fire didn't get put out, she was going to keel over from smoke inhalation. Not a pretty way to go.

Running over, she jammed a trash pail down over the burning phone book, hoping to smother the flames. In hindsight, she probably should have kicked the phone book over to the corner and tried to extinguish it over there. A meaty hand reached through the cracked glass and seized her by the ponytail. "It gonna hurt real bad," the ape-man who'd accosted her earlier and gotten kicked in the privates for his troubles. "If you make it easy, if you make it hard." Something slimy—his tongue—dragged itself across her cheek, and the Oracle had the sudden urge to vomit. She settled for jamming her shard of glass into the crook of his elbow right above the gang tattoo.

The hand holding her hair disappeared, and she scrambled to the relative safety of the back of the room. "Open the door!" the inmate screamed, slamming his hands against the glass. "Come here!"

_Right, like that's going to happen_. Despite her efforts with the trashcan, the air in the office was heavy and white with smoke. She staggered backwards toward the far wall, coughing, her eyes watering from the sting of it. Dr. Tancredi's carefully applied mascara was running down her face as her tear ducts fought to protect her eyes from the smoke.

A hand on her shoulder made her jump. _How'd anyone get in?_ she wondered as she spun to find an arm reaching down out of the ceiling. Following it up, she found herself looking into the eyes of Michael Scofield.

"Come on," he ordered, wiggling his hand. "Grab my hand."

Cass didn't want to admit it, not even to herself, but a wave of relief flooded through her at the sight of his face.

"Come on!" he repeated. The smoke was getting worse, almost obscuring his face as it rose up through the hole in the ceiling, eager to spread out farther from its source and making it impossible to breathe. The inmates howled and beat against the glass, screaming obscenities and the details of exactly what they planned to do once they got a hold of her.

The Oracle scrambled up onto the exam table and reached out to Michael. "I've got you," he assured her as he seized her arm and used it to haul her up into the ceiling. She kicked off the table, trying to help him as much as this body would let her and once again cursing Sara for not spending more time at the gym. This being saved by the big, strong man was not Cass's style.

Scofield was perched on a large metal pipe up in the ceiling, and as soon as she could, she hooked her elbow on it and tried draw herself up beside him. She'd inhaled too much smoke, she realized as a series of hacking coughs forced her to stop, dangling in midair.

Michael grabbed her around the waist and hauled her up next to him, guiding her into a sitting position on the pipe beside him as she doubled over from the smoke. Her eyes were watering so badly that the world had become one big blur.

A hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped, in spite of herself. "Are you all right?" Scofield asked. "It's ok—I'm not going to hurt you."

She coughed again, into her shoulder, and wiped in vain at her runny eyes. The back of her hand came back smeared with black from the mascara. "Aren't you generally supposed to…get down in a fire?" she joked in between coughs. She smiled weakly. "So, what's the plan?"

"See these pipes,"—he touched the one they were resting on—"We're going to stay on them. They go through the wall, into the hallway, and they're going to get us out of here. All you have to do is follow me."

Cass nodded numbly, trying to force her brain into catching up with the rest of her. Then she remembered. "Wait—we can't leave yet! There's a guard down there…out in the infirmary. They've got him handcuffed to a post…"

Michael's eyes flitted from her face down to the hole in the ceiling, his face hard. "No," he said after a moment. "There's no way we can get to him, not without putting all our lives at risk. COs can be used as leverage. I get back to Abruzzi—he'll find a way to use the bull as a bargaining chip with the police outside."

The look on his face was as uncompromising as granite, but the one in his eyes betrayed a man who didn't like the decision any more than she did. She may not be a real doctor—just inhabiting the body of one—but she understood the concept of triage. A guard—another man—might be able to make it through this alive, but not the lady doctor. She was just rape fodder as long as she stayed within the prison walls. That didn't stop Cass from giving one last forlorn look down into the sick bay office before following Scofield down the pipe.


	20. Riots, Drills, & the Devil 8

Disclaimer: I don't own _Prison Break_, _Buffy: the Vampire Slayer_, or _Angel_. Nor do I profit from writing this. Please don't sue me. Most of the action and some of the lines are taken directly from _Prison Break_ episodes #6 & 7: "Riots, Drills, and the Devil (pt. 1 & 2)".

-----

Trepkos was pissed. The people who'd hired him had made it sound like a cakewalk to take down Burrows. They'd never said the man was inhumanly strong. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he was on Death Row and had nothing to live for. Or maybe the people who'd given him the contract hadn't been properly forthcoming about Burrows' nature.

He reached up and rubbed one of the small horns encircling his head. Thanks to Burrows' little trick with the handcuff, he was bleeding too badly to maintain his disguise as the human 'Turk'. It felt like his whole gut was on fire, just from those three little stab wounds. He was starting to think Burrows had punctured an organ, though how a human could hit that hard…

He tightened his hand around the length of pipe he'd found. He'd killed twenty demons in the ring and would have killed the twenty-one necessary to win his freedom if that vampire hadn't come in and let them all out. A measly human was not going to get the better of him.

-----

Not for the first time, Cass cursed the Powers That Be for making her short. She'd been short in life, and they hadn't saw fit to make her any taller in death. It limited her on what bodies she could slide into. Right now, she found herself wishing she was as tall and lanky as Scofield. And wearing tennis shoes.

Her foot slipped as she tried to scramble from one pipe to another, and she barely caught herself before she went crashing through the ceiling. The prisoners were down there—the ones who'd been harassing her in the sick bay office. It hadn't taken them along to figure out where she'd gone. She could hear them cackling like a pack of hyenas.

"You ok?" Michael asked as he helped her across.

"Yeah, I'm fine—just thinking about writing the doctor a note telling her to invest in shoes with tread for work before I slip out."

"How does that work anyway? Sucre…Lindsey couldn't tell me."

"Basically? My soul evicts hers and takes over."

"What happens to hers? It goes to your body?"

"No, I don't have one of those any more. I mean, I can corporealize when I need to, but I paid my fee to the boatman a _long_ time ago. No, she's sitting in a place in the Hereafter that looks sort of like the waiting room at a dentist's office, probably reading three-year-old copies of _Cosmo_ and drinking really bad coffee."

"Sucre too?"

Cass chuckled. "Last I was up there, he was busy making friends."

Michael paused. "Sucre's a good guy. There was no way of knowing, when I got here, who my cellmate would be—if it'd be someone who'd go along with the plan. I lucked out, I guess, with him. He wants to get out and marry his girlfriend before his cousin can steal her away. Still, the plan makes him nervous."

"He's terrified of demons," she said, sitting down beside him to rest for a moment. The heat, up here in the ceiling, was almost unbearable. She wiped her face on her arm, smelling the smoke caught in the fabric of her shirt.

"He's Roman Catholic."

"So I'm told." When they'd rounded that last corner, the sounds of the prisoners had died down. They might be able to take a little break, let her catch her breath. "What's happening in the cellblock?"

Michael's eyes flicked upwards for a moment, as if he were praying for strength. "All hell's breaking loose…but I think if we stay up here, we should be ok."

The Oracle tried to meet his eyes, but he wouldn't look at her. "You're blaming yourself for it," she ventured.

That made him look over. "You saying I shouldn't?"

She shook her head. "No, I'm not saying that." Great, another morally conflicted man dropped right into her lap. As if she didn't have her hands full already. At least, she didn't think a file on Michael Scofield had ended up on her desk. Not that she'd checked recently.

One of the ceiling tiles, just ahead of Scofield, popped up, and he held out a hand to silence her. Cass waited, barely breathing, as a head belonging to one of the prisoners slowly poked its way up through the newly made opening. Michael waited for a moment and then, just as the head started to turn, slammed his foot into the man's face. The head disappeared.

"Move!" she ordered, and they both scrambled past the opening in the ceiling and further on down the pipe until they reached an office where the renovations hadn't quite been completed and the ceiling opened up. As they watched, the rampaging inmates rushed passed the door, their shouts echoing up and down the hall.

Michael went first, climbing down onto a filing cabinet and then dropping to the floor. Cass lowered herself down as slowly as she could, her toes barely reaching the cabinet. The tiny drop let out an enormously loud clang. She froze, afraid that the noise would bring the inmates back in their direction. "Here, I gotcha," Michael said, reaching up and putting his hands under her arms to help her down.

Cass swallowed as her feet hit the floor. "I need to warn you," she said in a hushed voice. "There's a demon in the prison. His kind usually hire out as mercenaries and musclemen. I don't know why he's here, but be careful."

"I will," he promised.

The door banged open. "Hey! Fish!" Oh, god, it was the big one again. The one that had licked her. "You gonna keep that nurse all to yourself?" He leered at the both of them, mindless of the blood oozing from his arm where she'd stabbed him.

Cass turned and ran for the connecting office, but a set of grunts made her stop in the doorway and look back. Scofield had jumped on the other man's back and was now hanging on for dear life as the big inmate tried to shake him off. She started to move forward to help, but they came flailing towards her, and she had to jump back. Michael actually seemed to be getting the better of him, his lanky arm pulled tight across the other man's throat, but then another of the convicts—the scrawny white guy with the bad leg—raced in and jumped on the pile.

The Oracle lashed out with her foot, catching the man at the back of the knee with her loafer, and was rewarded with the sickening crack of bone. The man collapsed, screaming in pain, as she kicked him again, this time in the kidney. He'd be pissing blood for a week if she had anything to do about it.

Scofield, in the meantime, had managed to choke the big man into unconsciousness. He looked up at her, pale eyes wild, and she yanked him to his feet.

This part of the prison actually looked sort of familiar. It took her a moment to realize they were headed for the visitation area. She rounded a corner and skidded to a halt—prisoners ahead. Michael slammed into her from behind, nearly knocking her over. "Can't go this way," she murmured.

He glanced down at his arm, rolling it to look at the back of his forearm as if he were checking a part of his tattoo. "We have to go back," he said, pointing to the way they'd just come. Back into the depths of the prison.

Cass was starting to shake from the adrenaline poisoning, and her brain felt soupy. 'Fighters' brain', the foot soldiers called it. She was glad one of them was thinking clearly as she followed him into what looked like a storage area. Desks, chairs, filing cabinets, and shelves were stacked helter-skelter in the rooms they ran through.

"That's it!" he said, pointing to a door leading out into the yard.

The Oracle dug into the pocket of Sara's slacks and came up with an electronic key card. "Wait…I can't leave you here," she gasped. The rest of those inmates couldn't be that far behind—she could here them screaming like wild dogs.

"You don't have a choice," he said, giving her a roguish smile "I'm one of the bad guys, remember?"

"What're you going to do?" she demanded. Leaving him like this just seemed _wrong_, despite his reminder that he was a legally held prisoner of the state of Illinois. She'd already left one man behind today (oh, god, she hoped he was ok).

He shrugged, resting his hands on his hips. "Go back to my cell…stay out of the way."

Something was flickering across the wall behind him—a little red dot. Horror filled her as her adrenaline-overloaded brain realized what it was. "Fuck, Michael…"

He looked down, brow furrowing at the tone of her voice. "What?"

Cass glanced back over her shoulder, out the reinforced window in the door. There were a handful of men, in black, crouching on the roof across the yard. _Snipers_. "They see us." She looked back and saw the tiny red dot, sitting right over Michael's heart.

He saw it too, his throat working to get the words out. "You have to go."

She shook her head. "I can't—they'll kill you." She was in the body of the prison doctor, a civilian. They'd protect her, but they wouldn't think twice about shooting him.

Michael swallowed again. "Go out the door," he ordered, stepping closer to her. "I'll drop to the floor."

"These are sharpshooters, Michael," she snapped, "They won't miss, and you are not taking a bullet for me!"

"Wasn't planning on it," he said as he reached out and shoved her, intending to push her closer to the door and out of the way. Cass resisted, fighting back against the force of the push, even as she heard the crack as a bullet shattered glass behind her.

Pain beyond pain exploded like a firework in her head.

She felt her spirit try and yank free of Sara Tancredi's body as it fell to the floor, a bullet embedded in the back of its head. Instinct wanted to swap her soul for Sara's, to let Sara die, but Cass refused to go. "Michael…" she hissed. Making the words come out was like speaking through a mouthful of molasses. She couldn't see through the blinding pain that filled her vision with blackness and bursts of white brighter than any bolt of lightning.

He was next to her. She somehow felt his elbow bump her shoulder. "Oh, God…"

"Michael..." she repeated. This body was dying fast as the blood flowed out. "Need an out—Lindsey's cross. Bleed on it…opens a portal. One shot…no set destination. Thank…"

And she died.


	21. Riots, Drills, & the Devil 9

Disclaimer: I don't own _Prison Break_, _Buffy: the Vampire Slayer_, or _Angel_. Nor do I profit from writing this. Please don't sue me. Most of the action and some of the lines are taken directly from _Prison Break_ episodes #6 & 7: "Riots, Drills, and the Devil (pt. 1 & 2)".

-----

"Is there some trick to this?" Bob the CO asked as Lindsey handed the eggbeater drill to him.

Lindsey had done all the drilling since they'd crawled down here, and his arms were aching with the effort. "Yeah, don't hit the gas pipe?"

"Gas…gas pipe?"

"Yeah, the pipe that carries the gas," he snarked as he sat down on the floor. Reaching behind his head, he stretched first one arm and then the other. Two more holes and they'd be through. Well, two more holes and then they'd be able to break through using a length of heavy metal pipe that was sitting next to him with the rest of the junk Scofield had gathered together down here.

Bob reluctantly put the tip of the drill into the hole Lindsey had already started and began to turn the crank.

The lights went out.

"What now?" he yelled at the ceiling, smacking the junk pile and sending bits and pieces scattering across the room. "What else do you have hidden up your sleeves that you plan on using to torture me at some later date?" Without power, the makeshift projector Scofield had rigged to throw the devil image on the wall wouldn't work. If the image wasn't on the wall, then they couldn't drill without risking life and limb.

"Do I…" Bob started to ask, but then trailed off at the sight of Lindsey's frustration.

Lindsey sighed and rubbed his hands across his face, leaving trails of white concrete powder stuck in the sweat. "Just…finish that hole, and we'll wait for Scofield to come back."

"Meow!"

Something small and furry settled itself on his hand. Lindsey looked down in the gloomy, diffused light filtering down from a window somewhere high, high over head. Westmoreland's cat—what was she called?—was sitting on his hand, looking at him with big eyes. "Meow!" she repeated insistently, then got up and bounded over to one of the exits. It wasn't the one that led back to his cell. Actually, if Lindsey had his bearings right, it led deeper into the prison. The cat sat back down and raised a paw as if pointing down the maintenance corridor. "ME-YOW!"

This was absurd. "Oh-kay, Lassie, I can take a hint," he muttered.

The drilling stopped. "What?"

"Lucky break for you—cat wants us to follow her." He eased back and grabbed Bob's arm, hustling him down the corridor. The cat walked in front of them, swishing her tail in a way that seemed to say she was pleased they'd gotten her message.

"We…we're following a cat?" the guard asked as they stumbled along in the dark. The corridor was just wide enough for one man to walk and only occasionally scrape his shoulders on pipes.

Lindsey took the drill from the other man and stuck it down the side of his boot, pulling his pant leg over it to help hold it in place. "Yes, we're following the cat. I've dealt with all sorts of weird messengers lately…"

He was cut off by a shout of "Sucre!"

Michael's voice, coming from the drilling area. "Down here!" he called back. How on earth was he going to explain this to Scofield? Somehow, he doubted the other man was going to buy the 'cat says we should follow her' explanation. Lindsey wasn't sure why he was buying it himself.

Fortunately (or not), Scofield wasn't interested in where they were going as he stumbled up and grabbed hold of Lindsey's shoulders. "Your friend… Your friend's dead," he said, choking. Maybe from breathing too hard or maybe from crying, Lindsey couldn't tell.

"What? Who's dead?" He shook Scofield. "Who's dead?"

"Your friend—the one like you, who can hop bodies like you do," Michael answered, either not seeing Bob or not caring if the guard heard. "She was in the doctor, and a sniper shot her. Lindsey, he was trying to shoot me, and she wouldn't get out of the way! I tried to push her…"

His stomach knotted as he processed what Scofield was trying to say. "The Oracle? She's dead?"

"Dr. Tancredi's dead?" Bob asked from behind him.

Scofield nodded, the motion just barely visible in the dark.

That couldn't be right—Higher Powers didn't die, right? "Are you sure?" Lindsey demanded, not caring that he probably sounded a little crazy. Cass was his guide. How the hell was he supposed to navigate this Gauntlet thing without a guide? "Are you positive she's dead?"

Michael pushed away from him, leaving sticky smears of something across Lindsey's bare upper arms. He didn't need to see it to know it was blood. The Oracle's blood.

"Meow!" the cat demanded impatiently from farther up the corridor, probably wondering why they'd stopped.

If Cass was dead, then there was nothing they could do but keep moving forward. Hell, maybe this cat was supposed to be his new guide or something. "Come on," he said, grabbing the front of Michael's t-shirt. "Follow me." They started forward again, and Scofield fell into step behind him.

-----

Lincoln Burrows couldn't see, couldn't breathe, and almost couldn't stand up. Could his day get any worse, he wondered as he staggered through the Fox River's basement. Yes, his brain supplied, it could. Something happening to Michael—trapped in A-wing with the rioting crazies Michael—would definitely make his day a whole hell of a lot worse.

Turk stepping out of the shroud of steam, holding a pipe, probably could make it worse as well. Especially Turk didn't look human anymore. His hair was gone, replaced by a ring of small horns around the crown of his head and hard bone that extended down over his nose. His skin was a darker shade of beige and scaly. Lincoln swallowed. Maybe he'd be panicking more if he hadn't just had the oxygen to his brain severely restricted. "Turk, why're you doing this?" he asked as the man…er, monster began to circle him. "Who sent you?"

Turk's response was to swing the pipe. It struck Lincoln right above the hip, making him fold up on himself. He fell back into a corner, which meant the next blow hit him on the meat of his arm, knocking him back out into the open. The third blow he managed to dodge, the pipe clanging off the railing. They were on a catwalk over the open furnace room, about fifteen feet up. Linc grabbed hold of the pipe and kicked at Turk's knees. One buckled, and he rammed into the man, knocking him over the guardrail.

-----

"Why are we in the furnace room?" Scofield finally asked after about five minutes of following the cat farther and farther down the back corridors of the prison.

"I don't know—ask the cat," Lindsey snapped. He'd moved ahead of the CO, putting the guard between him and Scofield, just in case Bob decided to make a break for it. Not that he really thought Bob would—since he'd been the one to protect him from T-bag's predations—but it never hurt to be too careful. Especially since he was flying guideless at the moment.

The body of a demon came hurtling down out of nowhere and hit the ground right in front of him, barely missing the cat. "Shit!" Lindsey swore, dancing back out of the way. From the snapping noise the demon's neck had made when it hit the concrete, it was definitely dead. "Where'd that come from?"

The three men (and possibly the cat, though she'd never admit it) looked up and saw man crouched on a walkway high above them, clutching at his throat.

"Linc!" Scofield shouted up to his brother.

Lincoln held up his hand and disappeared from sight. A moment later, he reappeared on their level and crushed his brother to him in a giant hug. Burrows' eyes were wide and more than a little wild as Scofield clung to him. Michael buried his face in his brother's shoulder for a moment before pulling back.

"Where've you been?" Burrows demanded. He was covered in blood, most of it coming from a gash on his head and from around his neck. Looked like someone had tried to strangle him. Lindsey looked down at the demon at his feet. Huh.

"All over," Scofield answered. The hug had transferred some of Burrows' blood to him, staining the side of his face red. "Are you all right? Cass warned me there was a demon in here—a mercenary." Both brothers looked down at the creature in front of Lindsey.

"So that's a demon?" Burrows asked, raising an eyebrow.

There was a ripple in the air, just over the brothers' shoulders, and another demon—this one wrapped in a black hooded cloak appeared. "Uh…folks," Lindsey called out. He grabbed Bob's shirt and turned. The demon was apparently one of six. He and the CO began backing towards the brothers as all six pulled swords out from beneath their cloaks in smooth, synchronized movements. He scooped up a length of pipe that was lying on the floor. The cross Cass had put on his wrist clinked against it. "I don't suppose your ready for round two?" he called to Burrows.

"More like round four," the big man called back, but he too settled into a fighting stance. He had a pair of handcuffs dangling from one wrist, and he slid the loose one over his fingers like a set of brass knuckles.

Beside Lindsey, Bob swallowed but brought his fists up, a look of determination almost chasing the fear from his round face. That just left Scofield…

A tattooed arm reached around and seized the cross dangling from Lindsey's wrist. He barely had a moment to protest before Scofield ripped it free from its chain. "What the fuck are you doing?" Lindsey demanded as he looked back over his shoulder at the taller man.

Scofield wiped the cross over his cheek, staining it with the blood from his brother's neck. "Getting us out of here," he said and then tossed the cross to the floor.

It landed with a ping that was both barely audible and phenomenally loud. Then a roar filled Lindsey's ears as a portal opened up in front of them. The cat bounded through before it had even reached its full width.

"Follow Marilyn!" Scofield yelled. He grabbed Bob's arm and hauled the both of them through into the black vertical whirlpool.

Burrows shook his head as if thinking his brother was crazy and then dove in after him.

Lindsey cast one last look at the six swordsmen and the demon corpse, then he too stepped through the portal. It closed as soon as he passed through, leaving only a small, warped, silver cross behind.

_So ends part 1: Trial of the Wolf_


	22. Chapter 13

Disclaimer: I don't own _Angel_, _Buffy: The Vampire Slayer_, or _Prison Break_. Cass is my own, so ask before borrowing (though heaven only knows why you would).

A/N: And we're back to Lorne and Anya and Fernando. You didn't think I'd forgotten them, did you? (Oh, and Bob the CO is an actual character from _Prison Break_. 'Bob' is apparently short for Tyler Robert Hudson…I'm not making this up.)

-----

"Ooh…is there a file on me? There should be a file on me. Should be a nice, thick one too since I've been around for about a thousand years. Where's my file?"

Lorne glanced back over the rows of filing cabinets to where the Files & Records lady was flipping through _Home and Garden_. She didn't seem to have heard Anya, thank his lucky stars. "Can you try and keep it down, lady bug? We're here to look for files on that Burrows fellow, not you."

"Ah-ha!" Anya held up a file labeled 'Anyanka'. Quickly, she flipped to the back. "Hey, there's nothing in here about me dying saving Andrew! There's just a note 'See also Sunnydale Hellmouth and Buffy Anne Summers, cabinets 1-144'. I can't believe this! There's nothing in here about me saving Andrew—that was my finest moment! That and starting the Russian Revolution, but still!"

Lorne patted her sympathetically on the shoulder. "Focus, crumbcake," he said, taking the file from her and hastily stuffing it back in the drawer. "We're looking for the Bs."

She gave a snort of disgust and moved on down the line of cabinets, still muttering under her breath about the injustice of it all. He didn't blame her…really. Even he'd been tempted to sneak a peek at what Wolfram & Hart had on him until he remembered he'd worked for them for a year and they'd have _plenty_. Including things he didn't particularly want to remember. Having his sleep removed and then trashing the Halloween Party? Yeah, fun times compared to some of the others.

"Found it!" Anya exclaimed as she yanked out a drawer. "Hey, he's the only one in here."

Lorne peered over her shoulder. "Why is there a folder labeled 'Prophecies'?"

She handed that to him and then started rooting around in drawer. "Copy of his birth certificate, arrest record…"

Lorne shut out the sound of her voice (a talent he seemed to be improving upon the longer he was around the effervescent blond) and started reading. Seems Mr. Burrows was descended from a long line of potential power players in the Apocalypse. There also a three page Xerox of a scroll written in some language he couldn't even identify. Glancing over his shoulder at the Files & Records room lady—she turned a page in her magazine, paying them absolutely no mind—he slipped the copy of the scroll into his jacket. The Oracle had to know someone who'd be able to translate. Someone sufficiently Wes-like when it came to language and ancient prophecies.

"Found it!" Anya whisper-yelled into his ear as she pulled a VHS tape out of a folder at the back of the cabinet. "Ooh, look, here's a contract to have someone muck with it."

Lorne took the tape from her and read the label. There was a smudge of what looked like peanut butter next to the scribbled date and time. It seemed to be the original tape from the security camera in the parking garage where the vice president's brother had been shot. Taking Anya by the arm and bumping Burrows' draw shut, he headed back up to the Files & Records desk. "Excuse me, but is there some place we can view this tape?" he asked the clerk.

She glanced up from an article about slipcovers and looked at him, her rather plain face expressionless. "There is a viewing room, one floor up, on your right when you exit the elevator."

"Thank you, sugarloaf," he said, giving her his best smile (or at least, the smile that was his best when he wasn't in disguise. He wasn't quite sure if what looked dazzling on Krevlorneswath of the Deathwok Clan worked for Carson Lulling). "We'll only borrow it for a moment." Hopefully, Cass wasn't lurking somewhere, making black Xs in her notebook every time he lied.

-----

In an alley next to the law firm offices, Fernando paced. He wasn't sure if it counted as real pacing since nobody could see him, and therefore there was nobody to yell at him to knock it off. Pacing just wasn't the same without his Mama or an auntie screeching at him to sit down—he was driving them _up the wall_. No Scofield to give him that exasperated look that clearly said Sucre was breaking his concentration.

Still, there was nothing else to do. Occasionally, he'd walk through the side of one of the dumpsters that lined the alley and yelp. No matter how many times he did it, he still couldn't get used to the sight of his leg passing through the rusted metal. He was a ghost, no matter what that Oracle girl said. She'd promised he'd get his body back, but his gut didn't believe it. No, he was stuck in some sort of limbo between life and afterlife—was this Purgatory? He never should have robbed that convenience store.

Lorne and Anya had left a cell phone for him, sitting on the top of a discarded cardboard box. Not that he could use it since his hand passed right through it like it passed through everything else. Lorne had suggested that maybe he should try concentrating on trying to affect solid reality. The green demon seemed to think if he thought hard enough at an object, he might be able to touch it. So far, thinking hard had only given him a headache.

Which meant he was fucked if someone should happen to notice him. These lawyer-people—Lorne said they had ghost detectors. What if one of them should happen to bring a detector (he was unsure whether these were machines like the metal detectors at the court house or people) out into the alley? He didn't know why anyone would, but there was always the possibility. His luck was shitty like that.

Anya had set it up so all he had to do was push 'Send', and it would call her phone. That woman scared him more than he'd like to admit, but still…she at least looked human. And she wasn't the one responsible from yanking him out of his own _body_ and sending him something like two thousand miles across the country.

Ok, he didn't have to come, but he'd figured it was better than being stuck by himself in those creepy white offices.

There was a roar in his ears, like standing under the El when a train went by, and Fernando staggered, catching himself on the lip of one of the dumpsters. The world swirled violently, and it took him a minute to realize he was _holding on to_ the dumpster, not falling through it. Experimentally, he kicked the it. His boot hit the metal with a clang that echoed up and down the alleyway. He was solid again!

"Yes!" he shouted, thrusting both fists into the air.

The phone started ringing. Snatching it off the dumpster, he held it to his ear. "Hello?"

"Get to the rental car, _amigo_—Anya and I are coming out fast!" the demon panted. There was a crash and something that sounded like a gunshot and Lorne was saying something into the phone that was in another language but definitely sounded like cussing. Then the connection was cut, filling his ear with static.

Time to go, he figured as he set off for the parking garage where they'd left the rental at a jog. They'd picked up the black Impala four-door at the airport and driven straight to the law firm. Somehow, he'd managed to ride in the backseat without falling through the floorboards and onto the high way. Lorne had said something about "subconscious control", but then traffic had gotten absolutely _loco_, and the green demon to focus all his attention on the road and not dying. Houston people drove like maniacs.

Fernando was the first to the car, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his prison blues and bouncing impatiently. He didn't have long to wait—the others came rushing out of the elevator like _el Diablo_ himself was on their heels, Anya in the lead. She'd lost her shoes somewhere, and her hose hung in tatters from the bottom of her feet.

Holding out her keys, she pressed the key fob, making the Impala beep behind him as the doors automatically unlocked. "Give me the keys," he ordered as she came to a crashing halt right into front of him.

Her brown eyes went wide as he took the key ring from her. "You're…you're corporeal!" She let out a squeal and threw her arms around his neck.

Sucre choked a bit, trying to free himself from the virtual chokehold.

"Buttercup, let him go!" the green demon pleaded as he yanked open the passenger door and dove in. The disguise spell was gone, and the look in his burning red eyes was one of sheer panic.

Shouts announced a security team as they came pouring out of the stairwell. They looked more like SWAT than building security in their black Kevlar vests and helmets. He was pretty sure the assault rifles they were carrying weren't legal in most of the lower forty-eight.

"Time's a-wasting," Lorne muttered and slammed his door shut.

Anya let him go, and Sucre scrambled around to the driver's door. The rental's engine purred to life, and he backed it out of the parking space with a squeal of tires. The security team was, of course, between him and the exit, but he plowed ahead anyway, trusting that they'd get out of his way.

One guard had taken a knee and managed to squeeze off a burst of rapid auto-fire before being forced to roll away to avoid being squished by the Impala. Sucre floored it, and the car sailed past the toll tooth, snapping off the little arm blocking its path, and screeched off down the street in the direction of the highway.

It wasn't until they pulled off the entrance ramp and into the flow of mid-afternoon traffic that he let himself relax. Next to him, Lorne let out a great sigh of relief and turned to look back at Anya. "Do you still have the tape, sugar toes?" the demon asked.

In the view of the rearview mirror, the blond woman held up a VHS tape. "Safe and sound."

"What happened in there?" Fernando demanded, paying more attention to the woman in the backseat than he should. A horn blared and a green Lincoln cut him off, zipping across three lanes of traffic before coming to stop in the far left lane. All that could be seen of the driver was a puff of blue-gray hair barely reaching to the top of the steering wheel. He swore under his breath in Spanish and turned all of his attention to the road. _Loco_. Absolutely _loco_.

Lorne sighed again. "Apparently, Wolfram & Hart has anti-theft tags installed on all their evidence needed for criminal affairs. We set off the alarm when we got in the elevator and headed down instead of taking the tape back up to Files & Records." He shuddered a little at the memory. "It's only thanks to some fast-thinking on her part that we got out."

"I hit the first guard with a ficus," Anya explained, obviously pleased with herself.

"So, you got something that'll clear Burrows. Now what?"

"Now, we call Cass and get the hell out of Dodge."

-----

But it wasn't the Oracle who responded to their page. They turned the rental in at the airport and wandered out to a small side road that ran parallel to the runways, just on the other side of the chain link fence. "Calling the Oracle! Come in Oracle!" Lorne shouted into thin air.

For a long time, nothing.

Then, just as they were about ready to give up and find some other way of getting back to the Hall, there was a shimmer of light and a man appeared. He looked to be in his late thirties, dressed in white slacks and a white button-down shirt untucked. _Higher Power_, Lorne's brain supplied for him. You didn't need to empathic abilities to tell who this fellow represented.

"You're charges of the Oracle?" the man asked, looking from one face to the other. Concern creased his face, making the laugh lines in the corners of his eyes deeper.

They all nodded.

"My name's Leo," he continued. "Were you successful in your errand?"

Sucre's eyes narrowed in suspicion, and Anya moved the tape so it was completely obscured by her skirt. "Where's Cass?" Lorne asked, voicing the question they were all thinking.

Leo swallowed and allowed a hint of nervousness to show through his mostly serene façade. "There's been a problem."


	23. Chapter 14

Disclaimer: I don't own _Angel_, _Buffy_, _Prison Break_, or anything else I might be borrowing from. Because, yeah, this universe keeps getting more and more complicated.

Author's Note: Thanks to Imzadi for the review. You rock my world, hon. Also, I did some research for this chapter: "Questioning the Delphic Oracle" by John R. Hale, Jelle Zeilinga de Boer, Jeffery P. Chanton, and Henry A. Spiller.

-----

"Do you realize what you have done?"

The Oracle felt the wood beneath her cheek crack as Gabriel slammed her into the top of her own desk. Yes, she'd gotten the desk from Goodwill, and it was made from ply wood and particle board, but it still hurt like hell. She thought she felt something in her cheek give as well, but she immediately pushed that thought from her mind. Focus. She had to keep her focus, or she was going to lose everything.

"Do you realize who that woman was?" Gabriel bellowed in her ear, then loosened his hold on her collar, _slightly_.

Cass took a deep breath—the first he'd allowed her since dragging her into her own office and slamming the door shut behind them—and then swallowed. "Dr. Sara Tancredi."

"The daughter of Governor Frank Tancredi, one of the last few American politicians to remember the true meaning of justice. The doctor herself was a drug addict who was inspired to clean up her life. There were plans for them, Oracle. Not the kind of grand destiny plans that you would understand, but plans nonetheless." His nails were digging into the back of her neck, cutting sharp enough to draw blood. She could feel it oozing down her neck and across her throat. "Now, thanks to your stupidity, she's dead."

Gabriel let go of her neck, seizing the back of her shirt, using it pull her up from desk, and flinging her across the room. The back of her knees hit the front of the couch, and she sat down hard. She hadn't realized that her boss had this kind of fury in him. He'd always seemed so serenely arrogant. If he'd been especially hard on her, she'd always attributed it to her having come over from the ranks. Most of the Higher Powers in HR were handpicked humans who had died nobly or special spirits designed for this sort of thing.

She was just an oracle. A kid who somehow ended up in the hands of the priestesses at Delphi. They'd exploited the seer's powers she'd been born with. Day in, day out, she'd sat in that temple, breathing in the _pneuma_ that filled the natural cavern. They'd fed her enough to sustain her, barely. The only men she'd ever seen were those that came to seek the wisdom of the oracles. Amnesia accompanied the trance the _pneuma_ put her in, so she didn't even know what she said as she sat perched on her little three-legged stool above the cracks in the earth.

It'd dragged on for years. How many, she had never been able to tell, but it had come to a sudden end. A party of particular prestige had come to the temple—a king, a high priest, somebody of importance—and the priestesses had forced her down into the bowels of the earth, despite all of the omens that said that day was particularly bad for prophecy.

She'd been told, when she died, that an evil spirit had possessed her. Punishment for trying to force a prophecy from the Powers That Be. It was only in recent decades that modern science had told her just what the _pneuma_ was—ethylene—and that her death had simply come from a bad high. At some point, in her thrashing, she must have vomited and gotten some in her lungs. Pneumonia and death and then the chance to do something really worthwhile—the PTB always offered the opportunity to seers post-mortem—followed.

She'd chosen to join Michael's army because she wanted to make a mark on the world than rather just sit and watch it go by. Unfortunately, the Army of Light hadn't mobilized since before she was born.

Now, Cass realized with disgust, she'd definitely made a mark. She'd gotten an innocent woman killed. Her shoulders slumped as she hung her head.

"You will have to be punished, you understand this?" Gabriel said as he stepped in front of her. The Oracle could see the toes of his polished wing-tips on the edge of her vision. "I knew you were a liability from the moment your application for transfer crossed my desk, but we were so short-handed with the two near-Apocalypses in Los Angeles and the closing of the Hellmouth in Sunnydale. I decided to take a chance on you, but apparently I should have trusted my first instincts." With a gentleness incongruent with his previous rough handling of her, he lowered his hands to her shoulders. "For your crimes against humanity and this office, I strip you of your powers. I deny you the immortality granted to you when you crossed over the threshold of death. I leave you as you were—mortal and weak."

Power pulsed through his hands and slammed into her. Being struck by lightning was surely painless compared to this. Her bones vibrated, her blood boiled, her teeth throbbed with the sheer force of it. The Oracle threw back her head and screamed.


	24. Chapter 15

Disclaimer: I don't own _Angel_, _Buffy_, _Charmed_, or _Prison Break_. I'm just peeing in a lot of different peoples' pools.

Nota Bene: This is probably me making an ass out of myself, but this chapter assumes that you've read chapters 13-15 and 19 of "Trinity". I've tried to write it so you can get by without familiarity with the other fic, but I don't know how well it worked. And thank you to Imzadi, for the review.

-----

She bobbed just beneath the surface of consciousness, slipping down to the dark depths only to dream and then rise again. Something kept her from emerging from that inky pool—something that alternately tinted the world around her until everything was shrouded in a haze of red and filled her head with white static. Drugs, maybe. Or a spell.

"…_healed her cheekbone. Gabriel completely shattered it."_

"_I knew the man was an ass, but I never thought he'd do something like this. What set him off?"_

"_The Oracle was in possession of a prison doctor's body…"_

Lightning exploded in Cass's retinas.

"_Oh, God, she's seizing again!"_

-----

Waves struck a sandbar, spilling their energy before running almost lazily up onto the beach where four men lay. The Oracle trickled in on the water, swirling with the sea foam as it soaked the body of Michael again and again. Beyond him, Lindsey and Lincoln Burrows lay in a tangle of limbs and sea weed. The fourth man she didn't know, but he wore the uniform of a prison guard.

The waves dragged her out and then in again. This time, Michael groaned, as she flowed over and around him. The sound stilled the fear in her gut that he too had died on her watch. He pushed himself up on to hands and knees and began coughing up sea water. Then, the tide pulled her back out into the ocean.

-----

"_She's still burning up—if this fever doesn't break soon, it'll kill her. Has there ever been a…case like this before?"_

"_A few."_

"_Did they survive?"_

A cold hand on her cheek, so very remote from where she floated and yet it still chilled her to the core.

"_None of them did, did they?"_

"_Some went mad and had to be put down—it was a mercy. Others…to be so close to the Radiance and then have it so suddenly yanked away…"_

"_They committed suicide, Leo. Just say it. Dancing around the issue isn't going to help her any."_

-----

The dreams returned in nightmarish flashes, too fragmented to comprehend. Blood and gurgling water. Light filtered through stain glass and the musk of wolf. Soul-splintering screeches and long stretches of dusty road. Cass grabbed at the pieces, trying to hold on to them long enough to form some sort of coherent whole, but they all vanished like vapor as she closed her hands around them.

-----

"What'd you say?"

It took the Oracle a moment to realize that she was, finally, awake. She opened her eyes, and the world slowly took focus. She was in the Hyperion (she recognized the wallpaper from her earlier visits to see Connor). The room was dark except for the soft yellow light coming from the lamp on the table beside her bed. She felt sticky and drained as if she'd just run a marathon. _Or been stripped of my immortality_, she added sourly.

A hand brushed her arm, and she looked over to the other half of the bed. Connor Angel lay on his side atop the bedspread, watching her intently with shadowed eyes. His lower lip had been split and was now halfway healed. "How long have I been out?" Her voice came out in an embarrassingly frog-like croak.

"Long enough for me to get my stupid ass arrested walking down to the corner store. Dad and Cordy broke me out."

Cass screwed her eyes tightly shut in the hopes that when she opened them again, this would all have gone away. Maybe she'd fallen asleep at her desk and was right now drooling all over a stack of very important files. That would be so much nicer than having just gotten an innocent woman killed, having misplaced one, two, _three_ of her charges, and having the fourth tell her that in her absence, he'd been picked up for murder and saved by another Higher Power.

Except, she wasn't a Higher Power anymore.

She opened her eyes again and looked down at her hands. As small as ever, but the skin was a rich olive tone that she hadn't seen since she transferred to the HR office and gained the power to shapeshift. Panicked, she swung her legs over the bed, intent on getting to the mirror in the hotel room's attached bath.

Her legs collapsed under her, and she fell to the dusty carpet, knocking her elbow on the bedside table.

Sheets rustled behind her as Connor slid across the bed. "You okay?" he asked as he gently wrapped his arms around her shoulders and drew her back up onto the bed, half on his lap. She was shivering, Cass realized, as he held her steady, and the world was doing a swooping thing that reminded her all too much of the night they'd met. She had let him goad her into a slugging match that had ended with his father throwing her into a wall. She'd ended with a ceramic shard from a lamp buried in her back. Seemed like she was always doing something to humiliate herself in front of her charges.

Well, except for Lindsey, but that might be because he frustrated the hell out of her. Cass spent more time trying to _get to him_ than actually guiding him. Like right now, she had no idea where he was. The only clue was that beach from her dream. Something deep inside was telling her that what she'd glimpsed was more vision than dream. Christ, she hadn't had prophetic dreams since before she died. Hadn't Gabriel promised to strip her of all of her powers?

"I need to get to a mirror," she said, trying to stand again.

Connor helped her to her feet, keeping his arms locked across her chest so she wouldn't go tumbling. "I think you need to go back to bed," he muttered.

"And I think you need to get me to a mirror before I hurt you again."

He snorted. "Like the last time?"

"Hey, that head-butt had to hurt!"

"Very true, but it still doesn't explain why you're so desperate to get to a mirror. You've been sick for a couple of days and look pretty strung out. Maybe this isn't such a good idea." But he moved as he talked, helping her cross the distance between the bed and the bathroom.

The Oracle stumbled forward and grasped the edge of the sink, her stomach doing loop-de-loops. The movement made some of her hair swing forward into her field of view. Very dark brown, almost black, and hanging in crushed and matted waves. She swallowed and forced herself to look up at her reflection.

The face that looked back at her was one she hadn't seen since before the fall of Rome. It was a face she'd glimpsed from time to time in a puddle or still pool. Large brown eyes, glassy from sickness, stared back at her. Her features were drawn thanks to a childhood and adolescence of enforced fasting, but there was no mistaking the Mediterranean cast to them.

One hand stole up unbidden to touch the cheek that Gabriel had smashed. It was whole, but there was a residual ache, almost a phantom pain, lingering that made her snatch the hand away. Tears started to well up in the corners of her eyes, and she bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. Whether it was from the pain or exhaustion or just the hell of the past couple of days, she wasn't going to lose it in front of Connor. She'd stupidly shown her temper to him—he didn't need to see her tears too.

"What was that word you said earlier? When you were first waking up. Tri-something."

"What?" The question surprised her as much as it relieved her. "I don't…" Then, it came to her. The word she'd mumbled right as she passed over the cusp from asleep to awake. "Triune." She scrunched up her nose and looked at his reflection over her shoulder in the mirror. "Is that even a real word?"

"I think it's another word for "trinity"—a group of three."

The Oracle arched an eyebrow.

"I was going to Stanford before demons killed my family and pretty much waylaid my life." He shrugged. "Let's get you back to bed."

"So," she asked as he guided her back to the bed, "The cops still thinking you killed your folks and your sister?" Connor sat down on the edge of the bed as she settled, propped up against the headboard. Just the effort of walking to the bathroom and back had drained what little energy reserves she had. With a silent groan, she realized she probably should have used the toilet while she was up and about. Damn it.

"All the forensic evidence points to me. Luckily, I was just walking down the street when they arrested me. Nothing to connect me back to here."

Cass shook her head. "It's only a matter of time before someone from Wolfram & Hart tips the police off to the connection between you and Angel, as tenuous as it is…at least publicly."

"Which is why we were in the middle of moving out when Leo and the rest showed up with you."

"Who's Leo? And who are 'the rest'?"

"Leo's another Higher Power—Cordy's mentor apparently. He just showed up in the middle of the lobby with you in his arms and Lorne and Anya and Fernando in tow."

That made her sit up a little straighter. "Lorne's here? I need to talk to him."


	25. Chapter 16

Disclaimer: I don't own _Angel_, _Buffy_, _Charmed_, _Morrowind_, or _Prison Break_. I'm just peeing in a lot of different peoples' pools.

-----

Michael Scofield woke up wet with a lungful of sea water. Beneath him, damp sand shifted as one wave after another rolled in and then retreated. How had he managed to not drown? With a groan, he forced himself up on to hands and knees and was immediately wracked by a spasm of coughing as his body tried to expel the ocean he'd swallowed.

The sand, he realized, was actual beach sand made by millions of pulverized shells, not the gritty, pebbly stuff that rimmed Lake Michigan. The water was much too warm to be the lake, even in the middle of an April heat wave. Where was he?

Then, he remembered prison and the portal. And with the memories came the ever-present fear for Lincoln. His brother, he saw, was lying only a few feet away, on his back with another man—a stranger—sprawled half on top of him. Frantic, Michael crawled across the sand to his brother and pressed two fingers to the pulse in Lincoln's neck.

The skin of his neck was an absolute mess—it looked like someone had tried to garrote him and failed, and the salt water had only inflamed the injuries—but there was a steady throb against Michael's fingertips. He let out a sign of relief and sank back on his haunches. "Linc, time to wake up." He gave his brother's shoulder a shove.

The sun overhead was already well into its slow decline into night. They had, maybe, an hour or so before it sank below the horizon. The day's heat still hung heavy in the air. Michael tasted sea salt on the back of his throat and really wanted to brush his teeth. He settled for shaking Lincoln again.

The other man—the stranger—woke instead, blinking his blood-shot eyes as he sat up. "Where on God's green earth are we?" He looked around, taking in the small cove they'd washed ashore in. "Maybe that was wrong phrase to use."

The face was unfamiliar, but the man's way of speaking wasn't. "Su…Lindsey."

The man looked over at him with keen blue eyes, the faintest hint of laugh lines in the corners. His dark hair brushed the collar of his button-down shirt and was plastered to his necks and the sides of his face. There was something both arrogant and wary about the way he held himself. Mentally, Michael changed Lindsey's age from late twenties to early thirties. He was already starting to acquire the worn, uneasy look of a man who's seen too much, done too much. So this was the real face of the man who'd shared his cell for the past couple of weeks.

"Good to see you're still alive, Scofield," Lindsey said, giving him a nod. He looked down at himself and his eyebrows shot up. "And it looks like I got my body back." He raised one arm and rotated it, seemed to be studying his wrist. "It's good to be back. I guess the first test must be done. Does this look like Hell to you?"

Michael looked around at the water, the beach, and beyond that, the grass and trees. It seemed very peaceful, untouched by man. "No, it looks more like Florida."

"Without the high-rise condos and the Dairy Queens. Guess I must have passed." He stood, brushing the sand from his blue jeans. The look was sort of urban cowboy, Scofield decided, though there was a hole in the middle of the shirt, surrounded by blood and darkened by gun shot residue.

"Was that what you were wearing when you…were shot?" He'd started to say 'died' but couldn't bring himself to. Even after weeks of sharing a cell with the man, seeing the _things_ that had attacked Linc, it was still hard to process. Michael was going to have to completely shift his worldview to accommodate such things as demons and people who "borrowed" other peoples' bodies. He was going to have to sift through all his memories, questioning everything. That old homeless man who'd lived down the street from his elementary school—horribly disfigured burn victim or badly disguised demon? Or what about the girlfriend in college who had red eye in every single picture taken—even those done by professional photographers? It added unforeseen complications to an already complex situation.

Yes, he had managed to get Lincoln out of prison, but they still had to evade capture. And since they hadn't used Michael's carefully constructed plan, they had none of the provisions he'd tucked away to aid them in their flight. Hell, he didn't even know where they were—Lindsey was right, this area was much too underdeveloped to be anywhere in Florida. Maybe they'd lucked out, and the portal had dumped them out someplace out of the United States, someplace with a nonexistent extradition agreement with the US.

"…this is the shirt." Lindsey had been talking—answering his question—but he hadn't heard any of it.

Something brushed against Michael's hand, and he looked down to find Westmoreland's cat, Marilyn, rubbing up against him. The feline was as wet as the rest of them, but the sea water had started to dry, leaving salt in her spiky fur.

"Is it just me, or does that cat seem too smart?" Lincoln's voice was groggy but strong. His eyes were open and turned to Michael as he lay on his back in the sand.

Michael sagged in relief. Lincoln was all right—everything would be all right. Marilyn made a little hissing noise and moved to rub up against the big inmate. Michael watched as she bumped her head against the palm of his brother's hand, urging him to pet her. "I'm beginning to wonder if that's a cat at all," he muttered.

Apparently done with Lincoln's attention, the cat made her way across the sand, stopping first to rub along the length of the CO's side before continuing on up into the grass. "Cat or not, that seems like a pretty good hint for us to follow her," Lindsey said, climbing stiffly to his feet.

-----

Lindsey McDonald had no idea where they were. Obviously not the Earth dimension that they were used to. The air was too clean. He stole a sideways glance at the other men. Both Bob and Burrows looked like someone had put them through a meat grinder. Scofield was in better shape, but even he staggered as they made their way through the tall, unmowed grass. Eventually, Marilyn led them to a road and turned on to it, leading them northwest. At least he was guessing it was northwest since the sun was setting to his left.

The road itself was hard-packed dirt with some gravel mixed in here and there. It didn't look much used though there were several grooves cut by what he guessed were cartwheels. Primitive dimension then. The road was too dry to show the imprint of the cart-animals tracks, but looking around at the alien grasses, he realized that they probably weren't horses. At least not ones that he would recognize.

"Where's she leading us?" Bob the guard asked, a trance of whining in his voice. He was tired and beat-up and far from home.

Michael shielded his eyes against the glare of the sun and peered off in the direction they were heading. "Looks like mountains that way. Maybe she's leading us to a town."

"Or to a rats' nest," Lindsey heard Burrows mutter. He looked back in time to see the big man stumble slightly. Scofield fell back, putting a hand on his brother's shoulder. To comfort him maybe or to keep him from losing his footing again. "I need to get to LJ, Michael," Lincoln hissed.

Bob nodded in agreement. "I need to get home to my family. I've got a wife and daughter back in Joliet. Mandy…Mandy's going to be scared to death when she hears about the riot." He looked around at the grassy fields stretching out for miles ahead and to the north of them. To the south was a dark smudge that Lindsey wasn't quite sure the cause of. To their backs was the ocean. "What's the warden going to tell her when they can't find us back at Fox River?"

Good question. "Well, it's not going to take them long to find that hole behind the toilet," Lindsey answered as he started them moving back down the road. The cat was already a couple hundred meters ahead, twitching her tail impatiently as she waited for them to catch up. "So, they'll say Michael and I escaped. Possibly, T-bag or Abruzzi will talk or someone could have seen T-bag drag you into the cell, so they'll guess we've either taken you prisoner in our escape attempt or that we killed you and hid the body somewhere. As for Lincoln, well, he apparently bled all over the damn prison, so they might think he crawled off somewhere to die."

Burrows snorted.

"Or," Lindsey continued, "That he escaped with his brother."

The cat was still sitting there, washing her fur unhurriedly, showing no interest in going further. The wind ruffled the hair at the back of his neck. It felt strange to have long hair again after living under Sucre's shaved scalp for so long. He raked a hand through it impatiently and frowned—the wind carried with it the scent of wood smoke.

"People," Michael murmured as the brothers stopped beside him. "That way." The tall man pointed off to where a slight rise in the land blocked their view.

"Do you think they're friendly?" was Bob's question.

Lindsey looked down at the cat. Marilyn twitched her tail impatiently. He took a deep breath. "Only one way to find out."

-----

The rise had hidden the tent from view. Roughly circular with a center pole and six small, outer poles, Lindsey figured it was just tall enough for him to stand up straight if he went inside. The sides were made from brown animal hide. A campfire had been started just outside the tent door, and a figure crouched in front of it.

At their approach, the person's head lifted, and Lindsey started as the firelight caught the eyes and made them flash blood red. Despite the fading light, he could see it was a woman with grayish skin and pointy ears. _Some sort of demon_, he thought as he raised a hand in greeting. And her eyes were truly red, glowing like two dying coals as she studied them curiously.

"What are outlanders doing this far into the Grazelands?" she asked as he came a stop on the opposite side of the fire. She wore a knife at her waist and a quiver on her back, the long bow lying within reach—he wasn't taking any chances.

Bob came up behind him, practically radiating nervousness, and whispered, "What is she?"

The woman turned her eyes to him. "From what part of the world do you hail that you don't know a Dunmer when you see one?"

"'Dunmer'?" Lindsey repeated. The name rang no bells.

"What you people call 'Dark Elves'," she answered.

Elves…how Tolkien… It had been years since Lindsey had read _The Hobbit_ (he'd never found the patience to wade through _The Lord of the Rings_), but this woman didn't resemble one of those elves in the slightest. Besides her rather demonic coloring, she was dressed in a tunic and pants of animal hide, decorated with beads and feathers.

"Well, that explains the ears," Burrows muttered. Michael and Bob just gaped.


	26. Chapter 17

Disclaimer: I don't own _Angel_, _Buffy_, _Charmed_, _Morrowind_, or _Prison Break_. I'm just peeing in a lot of different peoples' pools.

-----

The woman's name was Arisis, and she had been waiting for them. Well, not for the four of them in particular. Actually, she'd only been expecting one man. When Lindsey asked her who had told her to wait, Arisis explained:

"The Daedric Prince Azura, the lord of the dusk and dawn, spoke to me in a dream and said I was to travel out into the Grazelands to the south and east of the Zainab camp and to wait for a man to come."

"Then what?" Bob asked from the far side of the campfire where he sat huddled underneath Arisis's cloak. The sun had set a few hours ago, and the air over the grassy plains had grown chilly as the moons (yes, _moons_—there were two of them) rose.

Arisis looked around at the four of them, her red eyes glinting in the firelight. "Then I was to guide the man to the Cavern of the Incarnate."

It was Michael's turn to speak. "Why?"

She arched an eyebrow. "Are you accustom to questioning the Daedra when they speak to you?"

The way she said it made 'Daedra' sound like gods. "Who are the Daedra?" Lindsey asked.

"The lords of Oblivion. Azura is just one of many princes, and the hordes they reign over are legion." She spoke with utter casualness as though dealing with these Daedra was a common place occurrence. Leaning forward, she lifted the lid on the clay stewpot that hung suspended over the fire by a tripod and sniffed at its contents. "Just a while longer and we'll have supper."

"So the Daedra are demons?" Lindsey ventured.

She blinked. "I'm unfamiliar with the term, outlander."

Then that must be it. This woman was in league with demons—never a good thing, especially if you were running The Gauntlet like he was. He sought Scofield's eyes across the fire and gave a slight nod.

His former cellmate, who had been observing everything the elf woman did with a critical eye, nodded that he understood, then leaned over to murmur something to his brother.

They would have to get away from the woman and soon. Unfortunately, Marilyn, who was currently curled up in Burrows' lap (having apparently taken a liking to the big man) wasn't offering any suggestions, and they had no idea how far away from the nearest town they were. They'd been running blind, but that was better than letting this woman serve them up to demons on a platter.

-----

After a dinner of stew that was too spicy for Lincoln's tastes (and it didn't help that he couldn't identify the meat in it), Arisis let them into her tent, which she called a "yurt". "It bothers me, how you got this far without weapons. We shall have to remedy that," she said.

He had to stoop to fit through the doorway. Inside, four pallets ringed a central, open spot. Four beds, but the strange elf woman had sworn she was only expecting one traveler. Michael had warned him at dinner to be careful around her. Lincoln was starting to suspect his brother was right to be suspicious. Where were the other two people who slept here?

Arisis was digging through her things, piling up weapons in the center of the floor. Linc wasn't much for weapons—look what trouble carrying a gun had gotten him into—but he didn't need to be an expert in medieval-esque weaponry to tell that the stuff she was pulling out wasn't top quality. Two knives, a short bow with accompanying quiver full of arrows, and a sword with a pitted and rusty blade were the only things she found.

"It's not much," she said, "But it's better than nothing."

"I'll take the saber," the man-who-had-been-Sucre said. "Picked up some training a while back." He made a few small sweeps with the blade, careful of the others crowded around him. "Of course, this is the first sword I've ever used where the blade was bent nearly in half and then hammered back into shape."

"Take what we can get," Michael muttered as he bent down and picked up one of the daggers. It was slightly longer than his hand and—unlike the sword—in good condition. He looked up at Lincoln. "Do you want the other one?"

Lincoln smiled and spun the handcuffs still attached to his wrist. "Nah, I'm good. Bob can take it."

The prison guard looked at the knife uneasily and reached for the bow and arrows instead. "These…these I might remember how to use. I went to Boy Scout camp every summer for nine years, and it took an act of God to get me away from the archery ranges. At first, it was because I wanted to be the Green Arrow from _Flash Comics_, but then I really just fell in love with it. I'm probably a little rusty though."

Arisis was watching the CO through slitted eyes. "If you would like to practice, a target could be set up away from camp."

"Now?" Michael asked.

Those eerie red eyes shifted to Lincoln's brother. "Yes. Is that problematic?"

"It's dark outside," Michael pointed out.

Their new acquaintances muttered something that sounded like 'outlanders'. "If you plan to travel in this land, then you're going to have to be prepared to fight in adverse conditions." She pushed aside the tent flap, revealing a thin strip of starry sky. "You're just lucky there isn't an ash storm." Then she was gone.

Lincoln and Michael shared a look. "Was the other one like this? The one who took over the doc's body?"

Michael swallowed. "No. Cass…Cass was definitely less abrasive."

-----

Arisis led them down to a small hollow in the shadow of a rocky hill. There was a scrubby tree/bush thing for Bob to aim at, and the hill would stop any stray arrows from disappearing forever into the night. The moons—God, Lindsey still couldn't get his head around there being two of them—hung low overhead, casting just enough light for them to pick out most of the holes in the ground before stepping into them.

Lindsey settled on a rock and tried to ignore the ache in his shoulders. He might be back in his own body, but his muscles were still convinced they'd been the ones to try and drill through concrete with an egg beater. Closing his eyes, he breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth like he'd been taught on his pilgrimage to Tibet. He'd gone to that mystical mountain kingdom searching for an edge, something that would allow him to compete toe-to-toe with Angel. In the end, the sword training, the protective tattoos—none of it had been enough. Angel had still won. Just like his Tibetan tutors had said he would.

_I don't have patience, they claimed. They were right._

Fabric scraped against rock as Michael Scofield settled next to him. "I wanted to apologize," he said quietly after a moment.

Lindsey opened his eyes. "For what?"

"For getting your guide killed. I should've…there should've been something I could do…"

"From what you told me, it sounds like there wasn't. Cass was a Higher Power, Scofield; she knew what she was doing." _Or not_, he thought as he remembered her uneven handling of him. The times when she'd been frighteningly confidant and the times when she'd admitted to flying by the seat of her pants. "She knew the risks," he amended.

"I keep trying to tell myself that, but it's not just her: it's everyone who's died thanks to my plan to break Lincoln out." He shifted uneasily, drawing one foot up to retie a shoelace. It didn't take a genius to tell that the guilty for all the lives lost in the riot was weighing down on him…and he wasn't handling the burden well. "Forget I said anything."

"No." Lindsey looked down at his hands, at the scar on his wrist from where his hand had been reattached. "No, I'm not. Look, if there's anyone on this rock that should be punished for acting callously with human life, it's me, and I am being punished. I was in Hell, wasn't I? I deserved to be there. I drew the line at killing kids, but anybody else?" He made shooing motion with his hand. "Was just there to be stepped on. That doesn't mean you let the guilt just go. I'm no good at this redemption preaching stuff—that's Angel's bag of tricks—but from what I understand, if you're going to make the big moves needed to be a real hero, innocent people are going to get caught in the crossfire. It's a fact of life. And you're going to feel absolutely shitty about it, and that's good in a way, because it's when you stop fretting over the loss of the little guy that you start to head over to the dark side. Trust me, once you get into that dark place, it's damn hard to find your way out."

For a long moment, the two men just sat there, regarding each other with level gazes. For most of that moment, Lindsey was stuck wondering if he'd just completely botched his first sincere attempt to offer guidance to someone. It'd been easier when he was pretending to be Spike's link to the PTB. Then, he just had to act high-handed and superior, mimic the White Hat routine Angel put on. Offering advice off the cuff was a lot more nerve-wracking.

Just as Michael opened his mouth to break the silence, Lindsey felt something suspiciously similar to a knife point pricked the small of his back, just to the left of his spine, as a hand came around and seized him by the throat.

"Try to flee, and I slit you open," a low voice growled in his ear.


End file.
